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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Boston and New York 



THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 



No proud discovery known in ancient lore 
Can match that wondrous waif Vespucci found, 
A world — new world — at ocean's farthest bound." 
DoMiNE Selyns to Dr. Cotton Matheb. 




VAX RENSSELAER AND THE NIJKERK WORTHIES 



THE STORY OF 
NEW NETHERLAND 

THE DUTCH IN AMERICA 



BY 



WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS 

MEMBER OF THE NETHERLANDISH SOCIETIES OF LEYDEN 
MIDDLEBURG AND LEEUWARDEN 





tr*'"^ ' 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(^ht 0itcrsibe i^vess €ambciU0e 

1909 



\ 



COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY WILLIA^M ELLIOT GRIFFIS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published April iqoq 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two CoDies Received 

APR 6 1909 

CopyrikiHt Entry 
CllASS C\^ XXc, No. 

COPY a. 



IN RADIANT MEMORY OF 

"DEAR OLD DORP" 

WHERE THE CHILDREN OF HOLLANDER, PILGRIM AND PURITAN 

IN MINGLED STRAIN OF BLOOD AND COMMON HERITAGE 

OF ANCESTRAL MEMORIES MADE GOOD AMERICANS 



CONTENTS 

I. Hudson seeks the Sea Path to China . 1 

II. The Manhattan Pioneers ... 10 

III. Jesse db Forest and the Home-Makers . 20 

rv. Peter Minuit, First ^ivil Governor . 30 

V. The First Church and Domine ... 40 

VI. Walter van Twiller, Director-General 49 

VII. The Patroons and the Manors . . .61 

VIII. The Rensselaerwijk Colony ... 73 

IX. KiEFT and his Indian War . . '. .81 

X. NlJKERK : THE OlD HoME BEYOND SeA . 90 

XI. The Maker of the Silver Chain . . 101 
XII. Stuyvesant and his Rule . . . . 110 

XIII. Outside Feudalism: The Free Farmers . 121 

XIV. Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware River 129 
XV. The Fall of New Netherland . . .139 

XVI. Life and Amusements of the Young Folks 149 

XVII. Social Life in New Netherland . . 160 



xiv CONTENTS 

XVIII. Schools and Schoolmasters .... 175 

XIX. Sundays in Colonial Pays . . . 185 

XX. Albany and its Annals .... 194 

XXI. DoBP and its Story 202 

XXII. The English Governors .... 215 

XXIII. Jacob Leisler : the People's Champion . 226 

XXIV. The Long Struggle for Religious Liberty 235 
XXV. Independence from Holland . . . 246 

XXVI. The Dutch Domines in the Revolution . 256 

XXVn. The Modern Pilgrim Fathers . . . 264 

Appendix 277 

Index 283 



PREFACE 

Let us understand the difference between Ger- 
many and Holland, the Dutch and the Germans, 
separate history from fairy tales, and distinguish 
jokes from facts. 

Despite official documents, book-titles, and me- 
morial tablets, there was never any such place or 
state as New Netherlands, nor any admiral named 
" van " Tromp, nor any Dutch clergyman with the 
title of " Dominie." The word " schnapps " was not 
in the Dutchman's vocabulary, nor did Hollanders 
ever talk Pennsylvania German, — as is repre- 
sented in the stage dialect of Rip van Winkle. The 
earliest settlers of New Netherland did not smoke 
tobacco. The Dutch folks of New Amsterdam did 
not associate Santa Claus with Christmas, but on 
the 6th of December they celebrated St. Nicholas's 
Day, and on the 25th of the same month the birth- 
day of the Christ. The hardy, active men who made 
New Netherland were not fat, or old, or stupid 
fellows. They were young men, lithe, alert, and 
venturesome. The first comers knew little or no- 
thing about tobacco, though they quickly learned 
its use from the Indians, and even smoked the home- 
grown article, presented to them by the Pilgrims 
of Massachusetts. Not one of them pronounced 



viii PREFACE 

the syllable " dam" in " Amsterdam" or "Rotter- 
dam," as if he were swearing in English. 

Most of the grotesque stories about the Hol- 
landers in New Amsterdam grew up in late times, 
long after Dutch ceased to be spoken in America. 
Then their geographical names were corrupted and 
a luxuriant crop of mythology, like fungus, gave 
the funny fellows their chance. Then the vulgarity 
and dregs of Dutch speech, with much of its snap 
and vitality, also, entered into American English. 
Then " schnapps," a German word, " Dominie," 
a Scotch spelling of the Latin "Domine," and 
"van" Tromp with his legendary broom, — prefix 
and besom being both purely British inventions, 
— came into our speech to corrupt English. Then 
young Washington Irving, without having seen 
any but the southern portion of decadent Holland, 
took the world-wide myth of Eip from the Shop, 
which has nothing in it peculiarly Dutch, out of its 
setting in Germany, located it in the Catskills, 
and made a funny picture of New Netherland men 
and ways. What if he had got hold of Pilgrims or 
Puritans first ? 

In hundreds of volumes purporting to be seri- 
ous history, Irving's comic supplement to the early 
history of New York is quoted as both fact and 
truth. Its coloring has been accepted as exact by 
so-called American historians. Darley's carica- 
tures and Boughton's delicious jokes on canvas 
have kept up the illusion. With such material his- 



PREFACE ix 

toriographers, taking themselves seriously, pieced 
out their narratives when original research and 
documents were both lacking. 

After the English conquest of 1664, the Dutch 
language, gradually falling out of law and busi- 
ness, was heard in the church and home, but 
written only by the ministers. Even after it was 
bowed out of the pulpit, it was lovingly kept in 
use by the aged. It lingered longest in the coun- 
try and in the city kitchens among the black slaves 
and the servants. Yet its snap (the very word, in 
this sense, is Dutch), vigor, and picturesqueness 
have enriched American English. Often gro- 
tesquely altered in form, as in " boss," " boom," 
" hunker," " boodle," etc., or in familiar terms 
like " forlorn hope," " taps," etc., it has furnished 
many of our expressions in military, political, and 
social life and much of our slang. "American- 
isms," borrowed from Low Country speech, have 
puzzled European students of English as spoken 
on this side of the Atlantic, who do not recognize 
old friends and the ghosts of history. Even the 
colors in " Old Glory " are criticised harshly, be- 
cause the historically Dutch origin of our flag, 
especially of the stripes, which stand for federal 
government, is not known or considered. Many 
British jibes and falsehoods about the Dutch, to 
our shame, mar our speech and writing. Of this 
we should repent, because four of our original thir- 
teen states were settled from the Netherlands. 



X PREFACE 

Yet the pendulum may swing too far either way. 
After the caricaturist follows the flatterer, though 
neither may ever have read or written a Dutch 
sentence. Diedrich Knickerbocker's "History of 
New York" and some recent books show the ex- 
tremes of jovial detraction and uncritical laudation. 
While our British friends tell about " van " Tromp 
and some decry even their best king, William III 
(" Dutch Billy ") as a " sour Calvinist," the speeches 
of those who glorify Dutch ancestors often soar 
as far beyond fact as do balloons above the earth, 
and an after-dinner " wind-trade " flourishes as 
in the days of speculation in tulip bulbs. 

To understand the Dutch people, we must not 
inquire of aliens in speech or temper, or of belated 
tradition. To get the truth one must see the Dutch 
homeland, go into the archives for the past, and 
let those long dead speak in their own defense. 
He must live among the Hollanders, and with their 
descendants, to know the real character of the 
people who laid the foundations of our four Mid- 
dle States. Then the student, who, like the author, 
is not of Dutch blood or inheritance, can emanci- 
pate himself from old wives' fables, distorted views, 
and damaging traditions. 

While, therefore, reckoning as assets some know- 
ledge of the language of the Netherlands and study 
in their archives during seven visits beyond sea, 
perusal of the books and papers in the deacons' 
chest in Schenectady and in the State Library at 



PREFACE » 

Albany, and familiarity with the local records of 
church and village in the valleys of the Hudson, 
the Mohawk, and the Karitan, I count as even 
more valuable my fourteen years of life with de- 
scendants of people from Patria in two Dutch- 
American towns. I studied five years at New 
Brunswick, New Jersey, the Dutch- American edu- 
cational capital. For nine years, as Domine of the 
Dutch church of Schenectady, I served a congre- 
gation uniquely rich in heirlooms and documents, 
the people being for the most part descendants 
of the pioneers of 1661. In both places I learned 
fact and truth in human lives as well as in parch- 
ments. Many current notions about New Neth- 
erland were seen to be vulgar errors, of which 
Americans should be ashamed. From the age of 
fourteen, until going to Boston to live, I was during 
twenty-five years a member of the Reformed Church 
in America, drinking in her noble traditions, while 
critically challenging all statements passing as 
history ; for between the truth of history and the 
truth of religion there is no vital difference. Hap- 
pily my predecessors or neighbors, in Schenectady 
(Pearson, Vermilye, Yates, MacMurray), in New 
Brunswick (Brodhead, Van Pelt, Corwin, Utter- 
wick, and Hansen), in Albany (Berthold Fernow), 
and in Ithaca (T. W. Strong and G. W. Schuyler) 
were prominent among those who have recovered 
the true story of the Dutch in America and given 
us genuine American history. To these, to my 



xu PREFACE 

fellow alumni of Kutgers College, to Mr. Irving 
Elting, Mr. Dingman Versteeg, Professor P. J. 
Blok of Leyden, Mr. G. Beernink of Nijkerk, the 
scholarly translator and editor of the Van Rens- 
selaer-Bowier Manuscripts, Mr. E. van Laer, at 
Albany, and to many archivists in Holland, I am 
greatly indebted. I invite the student to scan also 
the list of authorities at the end of this volume. 

I shall attempt to tell who the settlers of the 
Middle States and the founders of the Empire 
State were, what ideas and customs they brought 
here, how they struggled, first against a selfish 
corporation and next against English dukes and 
kings, for the rights of the Fatherland, and won ; 
how, happily for us Americans, they resisted all 
English attempts to fasten a state church upon 
the people; how and why their descendants were 
so loyal to the Continental cause and Congress, 
and how large are our inheritances from Dutch 
law, order, freedom, culture, and from those achieve- 
ments for civilization and humanity in which the 
Netherlands so long led the world. Avoiding in 
the text, as far as possible, any ostentation of learn- 
ing or research, I have tried to show my fellow 
Americans how worthy of serious study are our 
national origins other than English, and how rich 
is our inheritance from the Netherlands. 

W. E. G. 

Ithaca, N. Y., March 2, 1909. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Van Rensselaer and the Nijkerk Worthies (page 50) Frontispiece '^ 

Governor Minuit purchasing Manhattan . . . . 32 -^ 

Title Page showing Ship bearing Dutch Colonists . . 78 

The Van Rensselaer Tomb in Nijkerk Church . . . 92 ^ 

Corlaar in 1908. Home of Arendt Van Curler . . 102 . 

Tou;n Arms of some Ancestral Seats ....*: 152 ^ 

''A Poem in Twelve Cantos.'' The Cycle of the Year . 172 ^- 

William III and Queen Mary, on Seal of the Province of 

New York ......... 228 

Colonel John Taylor, of Rutgers College .... 242 x 

The Dutch in the Arctic Seas 264 '' 

Piet Hein capturing the Spanish Silver Fleet . . . 264 

Where our Flag was First Saluted. St. Eustatius . . 264 

Simeon De Witt, Surveyor-General of New York State . 272 ^ 



THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

CHAPTER I 

HUDSON SEEKS THE SEA PATH TO CHINA 

When, in 1567, the Spanisli Duke of Alva 
marched with his terrible " Black Beards " towards 
the Netherlands to subdue the Dutch people to 
the ideas of Philip II, the boy that grew up to 
found the Dutch West India Company was born. 
One hundred thousand Walloons, or French- 
speaking inhabitants of the Low Countries, fled 
at once to foreign lands. Within fifty years, half 
a million refugees from the Belgic Netherlands 
were dwelling in England, Holland, Germany, or 
in Switzerland, and enriching those countries by 
their talents, character, and industry. Instead of 
fewer than a million people living in 1567 on four 
thousand square miles of poor soil, the Dutch 
Republic had in 1609 a population of three and a 
half millions, or one as large as that of England. 

The Dutch end of the sea-route to Manhattan 
had been prepared before Columbus made land- 
fall. William Usselinx, born at Antwerp, founder 
of the Dutch and Swedish West India Companies 
that began the settlements of New York and Dela- 
ware, became interested in American enterprises 



2 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

by living in the Azores. These islands had been 
rediscovered by Dutch sailors in 1431 and colo- 
nized, becoming a new Netherland. From this 
point the ships bound for the New World began 
their westward voyages. Lying eight hundred 
miles west of Portugal, these nine islands emerge 
from the ocean on nearly the parallels of our 
Middle States. England lies in high latitudes. 
Cabot, Davis, and Frobisher, steering directly 
west, entered sub-polar regions. From the Azores 
to Sandy Hook is almost a straight line. In our 
day the German submarine cable connects Con- 
tinental Europe with America, by way of the 
Azores and Embden. 

When both Orient and Occident were opened 
to trade the islands rose directly in the path of 
commerce. Here, as to a school, one must come 
to learn about colonial business. For a long time 
the Azores were associated with America, but 
after the Spaniards occupied them, the Canaries 
became the base of supplies and point of departure 
across the Atlantic. 

In 1591, when the triumphant Dutch Repub- 
lic was twelve years old, Usselinx returned and 
began to agitate in favor of trade with America. 
He kept up the work of arousing public opinion 
until his death at eighty, leaving fifty printed, 
works behind him. In 1602 the Dutch East India 
Company was formed, but the Great Truce of 
1609 compelled postponement of his schemes for 



HUDSON SEEKS SEA PATH TO CHINA 3 

a West India Company, which was not organized 
until 1821. Meanwhile, however, the offer of the 
States-General of twenty-five thousand guilders 
to any one who should discover the northeastern 
route to China and Japan was a lure. So some 
Amsterdam merchants fitted out the flyboat Half 
Moon, with a crew of sixteen men, half English 
and half Dutch. It was named the Half Moon, 
after the victorious flagship, in which, in 1602, 
Vice-Admiral Kant had beaten the Spaniards in 
a great naval battle. Five days before the signing 
of the truce, April 4, 1609, Hudson weighed an- 
chor and sailed for Nova Zembla. 

In Arctic seas, amid icebergs and blizzards, he 
had to face a mutiny. The sailors, not relishing 
the idea of being frozen fast among polar bears, 
demanded that he go back. Hudson flanked the 
mutineers by steering westward across the At- 
lantic. 

Other pathfinders were then on the inland 
waters of America, all looking for the Chinese 
gate and "the needle's eye." Champlain at the 
northern lake side was meddling with firearms in 
Indian quarrels. John Smith on the lower Sus- 
quehanna kept hunting for that open sea in which 
he believed. Hudson, and later La Salle, was soon 
to join them, searching for the same mythical 
water. The " China rapids " in the St. Lawrence 
River, called in jest La Chine, tell how La Salle 
also souojht but found not. This idea of an inland 



4 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ocean, called Verrazano's Sea, then filled men's 
minds. Even to the end of the nineteenth century 
it dominated English fiction. 

Before leaving the homeland, Smith had written 
to Hudson telling him of this water somewhere 
near the fortieth parallel, and extending perhaps to 
the Pacific. Hudson, besides having his head full 
of the notion, carried Smith's letter in his pocket. 
Notwithstanding that entrance into America meant 
a virtual breaking of Holland's truce with Spain, 
Hudson hoped to find the route to China. 

Over the indigo blue of the Gulf Stream Hud- 
son reached in mid-July the Maine coast, stopped 
to remast his ship, and then moved southward. 
In August he passed "the King's river in Vir- 
ginia," where, he wrote, " our Englishmen " were. 
On the 28th, he put into Delaware Bay, but a strong 
current and much sand forbade the idea of an im- 
mediate route to China. On the 3d of September 
he doubled Sandy Hook. Here, near the fortieth 
parallel, so often talked about with Smith, was 
a great opening. What might it not lead to? 
Anchor was cast for the night, and the orange, 
white, and blue flag, with the initials O. I. C, 
was mirrored on the receding tide. 

We must put away twentieth-century ideas and 
think with Hudson and his sailors. Neither he 
nor they were wise in modern science. *' Nature- 
faking" of the most exaggerated kind was then 
in vogue. Mythical zoology was represented on 



HUDSON SEEKS SEA PATH TO CHINA 5 

maps and in books. In the Leyden Museum, 
among the curiosities catalogued was " the hand 
of a Mermaide," and Hudson's sailors had seen 
" mermaids " near the Russian icebergs, where we 
should find seals. Near the Catskills, they ate 
"dog," which would be "coon" to our taste and 
eye, for all Indian dogs were then very small. 
Neither the big hounds of Europe nor the white 
daisies, now so common in the Hudson valley and 
brought from beyond sea, were then known in 
America. The sailors enjoyed " Turkish wheat," 
where we relish corn in ear. Happy the release, 
if they, like some British tourists eating to-day, 
bit too far into the cob and got their teeth out 
safely. If they found " gold," or discovered what 
seemed valuable minerals, because of the colors 
of the rocks, they were only like other explorers. 
The beautiful New World was full of awe, wonder, 
and mystery. Nothing is more evident than the 
Dutchmen's delight in nature. 

The Half Moon lay at anchor for a week in the 
lower bay. "Three great rivers" were noticed, 
two of them being the Passaic and the Hacken- 
sack. Though the strangers were welcomed by the 
red men, yet before long arrows and bullets were 
shot in hostile exchange. John Colman filled the 
first white man's grave. Then the ship moved up 
past Manhattan, to which it is sheer tautology to 
link the word " island," for the name includes the 
idea of a place inclosed by two rivers. Although 



6 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

the wild men were treated to liquor, the word Man- 
hattan has no meaning of drink or intoxication 
in it. For thirteen miles they sailed along the 
majestic Palisade Kocks, from which the mythical 
"Norumbega" probably got its name. Through 
the broadened stream forming Haverstraw and 
Tappan bays, and in view of the landmarks later 
named Tedious, Stony, and Verplanck's points, 
past islands now the bases of lighthouses, and 
around Dunderberg, they reached the narrower 
and deeper river flanked by lordly mountains. 
They cast anchor under the splendid plateau of 
West Point. 

Anchorages were made at night and strict watch 
was kept, for what could fifteen men do, if thou- 
sands of red warriors should attack ? In one case, 
twenty-eight canoes filled with people came out to 
trade pumpkins and corn for kitchen ware, axes, 
beads, and copper kettles. More than once, native 
thieves climbed into or escaped from the stern 
windows with loot, and some of these were shot 
dead. There were other disturbances, and the fault 
was not all on one side. Gunpowder, firearms, 
alcohol, and iron came thus at one time into the 
Indian world. 

The gorgeous hues of the maples and of the 
" American calico plant," and the splendor of the 
scenery, especially after their late sub-polar ex- 
periences, made this seem to the Dutchmen the 
fairest land their eyes had ever feasted upon. As 



HUDSON SEEKS SEA PATH TO CHINA 7 

they emerged into a tamer foreground of flat 
stretches, there rose towards the western horizon 
the Catskills, out of which flow the Delaware and 
Susquehanna rivers. 

Invited to dinner, Hudson was paddled ashore 
in an Indian canoe. He landed and partook of 
American refreshments with a chief who was head 
of a village of forty males and seventeen females. 
Their roundhouse was of oak bark with an arched 
roof. Great stores of corn and beans, provision 
for the winter's succotash, piled up and amount- 
ing to three shiploads, lay near the house, besides 
what was growing in the fields. These showed the 
provident habits of these agricultural Indians, 
who as yet knew nothing of horses and cows. 
Cooked food was served in " well-made red wooden 
bowls." With shell knives the red women skinned 
"a fat dog" for a further feast, for they sup- 
posed their guests would stay over night ; but 
life in the Stone Age is a bore to a civilized man. 
A short visit was enough, and Hudson returned 
to his floating home. ^ 

The little ship beat her way northward, but the 
water shoaled. No open sea, or China, or any 
Pacific Ocean, was in sight. Juet, the mate, pene- 
trated in a boat beyond what are now Watervliet, 
Waterford, and Troy. They saw not a tide-water 
river in lordly flood, but many rapids and shallows. 
Even had they reached the river's source, in the 
Tear - of - the - Clouds Lake at the top of Mount 



8 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Marcy, they would have been no nearer, but far- 
ther off from Japan. 

Back and down the Half Moon moved to the 
ocean, her crew killing not a few natives, and 
staining land and water with needless blood. The 
"falconet," or little cannon of two inches bore, 
throwing a two-pound shot, was more than once 
fired to sink the canoes. Evidently this was what 
the sailors dub " an unhappy ship," nor can the 
intruders be acquitted of the charges of murder 
and of making drunkards. 

On the 4th of October the Half Moon was at 
sea again. Yet where should the crew go? To 
return to Holland might mean the gallows, for 
they had mutinied. The ship was pointed towards 
Ireland for the winter; but how or why we know 
not, the Half Moon cast anchor at Dartmouth 
on the 7th of November, 1609, and the English 
sailors forced Hudson to land. King James sent 
orders to hold the vessel. He actually forbade 
Hudson to leave England, hoping to get the full 
benefit of his discovery. The captain, however, had 
sent on his report to Amsterdam, asking for good 
sailors in place of bad ones. 

The problem was solved by the Muscovy Com- 
pany again impressing Hudson into its service, 
and the Half Moon was released. Hudson, intent 
on solving the world's mystery, recrossed the At- 
lantic. After discovering America's greatest inland 
sea, though not the way to China, he met lonely 



HUDSON SEEKS SEA PATH TO CHINA 9 

death in 1610 by starvation. Under the veil of 
apparent failure, Hudson's life was a success that 
shines with splendor as the ages roll on. For Hol- 
land he opened a great door of opportunity. 

As Captain John Smith's name is linked with 
four of the United States, Virginia, Maryland, 
Massachusetts, and New York, so Hudson's per- 
sonality is preserved in American history and in 
legend. His name is written imperishably on a 
bay, a river, and a strait. His career illustrates 
the truth that a man often achieves his best for 
the race after he is dead. Hudson rests from his 
labors and his works do follow.^ 

1 Some of the greatest of the makers of New Nether- 
land, Hudson, de Forest, Minuit, van Curler, sleep in 
graves unknown. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 

The quick-witted Netherlanders lost no time. 
Before the Half Moon was free from King James's 
clutches, merchants in Amsterdam had formed 
a syndicate to send a trading-ship across the At- 
lantic with Juet, mate of the Half Moon, as mas- 
ter of the new vessel. She was the pioneer of a 
great fleet with homely names, such as the For- 
tune, Tiger, Spotted Cow, Wood- Yard, Orange 
Tree, Arms of Amsterdam, Black Eagle, Blue 
Cock, Flower of Gelderland, Unity, The Pear Tree, 
New Netherland's Fortune, White Horse, Herring, 
Salt Mountain, Prince Maurice, which crossed the 
Atlantic and came back laden with American 
furs. 

In 1612 two famous skippers, Adrian Block in 
the Tiger and Hendrick Christiansen in the For- 
tune, crossed over and brought back to Holland 
not only a cargo of skins, but two sons of Indian 
chiefs, named Orson and Valentine. Between 1612 
and 1621, Christiansen made ten voyages into the 
great river. On Castle Island, now part of the city 
of Albany, he built a fort and trading-station. 
At Esopus a TonduiU or circular fort, was erected 
in 1614. 



THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 11 

By what name was " the Rhine of America " 
then known ? The Indians called it the Shatemuc ; 
Juet spoke of it as " the Great Stream," but soon 
it was known among the patriotic Dutchmen as 
the Mauritius, after the Union General Maurice. 
To others it was the North River, or the River 
Flowing out of the Mountains. Not until after 1664 
did Englishmen give it the name Hudson. 

The Dutchmen took a hint from native archi- 
tecture, and with the aid of the Indians built huts 
of timber and bark. These were about at No. 39 
Broadway, where are the offices of the Holland- 
America Line, and then much nearer the water ; 
for Manhattan has been artificially lengthened. 
Christiansen and his men spent the winter among 
the virgin forests which covered the spaces now 
occupied by the tunnel-like streets, on which rise 
skyscrapers made of Pittsburg steel, higher than 
Babel's Tower. This original Holland Society ate 
dinners with keen appetites and splendid digestioti. 

They noted the landmarks. Probably the first 
place to get a name was the Kaap, or cape, the 
rocky southern end of the island, called also the 
Hook, and later " Capsey " Hook. This became 
in time the official landing-place, being furnished 
with an iron rail for the safety of passengers, land 
lubbers, and boatmen embarking and disembark- 
ing. The water space covering the Kaap has long 
since been " gedempte," as the Dutch say, that is, 
dumped full of earth, and people in crossing the 



12 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

" Battery " walk over the historic place now under 
water. 

Between Capsey Hook and Spuyten Duyvil, the 
Dutchmen in exploring the island found a wonder- 
fully varied landscape, — high and low hills, lakes, 
swamps, forests, stretches of bald rock, grassy 
meadows, Indian trails, "castles," and villages, 
with fields of corn and patches of melons and beans. 
These, with amazing abundance of four-footed, 
winged, finny, and shell game, furnished juicy and 
delicious food, and filled the Dutchmen with enthu- 
siastic admiration. At home in Patria they had had 
to get their " staff of life " out of a spongy soil, 
which their ancestors after ages of toil drew up 
from the ocean, or fertilized into life from the dead 
sand of the sea bottom. Even after winning their 
land from the waves, it must be continually 
guarded lest it slip away into marsh or water. 
The boundless fertility of the New World filled 
them with perpetual surprise. The vast number 
of springs, brooks, and rills and the variety and 
grandeur of the trees were especially impressive. 
It recalled the Land of Promise about which they 
had read and their domines had often preached. 

Where is now the City Hall Park, stretched 
grassy meadows. Imposing hills, long since leveled, 
suggested dreams of future windmills. "The 
Swamp," still the centre of New York's leather 
trade, at that time required a boat to cross it. 
Canal Street was then a river, enlarging into a 



THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 13 

lake, rich in islands, coves, and inlets fringed with 
trees, whose leaves made shade and whose roots 
were the hiding-places of trout. Where lay heaps 
of clam and oyster shell fragments, left over from 
Indian feasts and wampum-making, visions of lime- 
kilns at once rose in the Dutchmen's minds; so 
they called it Kalk Hoek, or Lime Point. As an 
ordinary Dutchman pronounces Delft "Delleft," 
so " Kalk " in a sailor's mouth became " Kallek." 
In time the English called it the Collect, and in 
the days of its use as a rubbish receiver, it was 
well worthy of its name. 

The Indian village, where lived the Manhattans, 
or Island Indians, the Mana-hattas, was situated 
between high land and water, and was favorable 
for defense and food. Crowning the hill was the 
"castle" or palisaded village. Below were the 
maize lands and the endless supplies of furs, 
game, material for shell money, fresh- and salt- 
water fish, and the clams, oysters, and eels that 
thrive in tidal waters. At the river's mouth was 
Canoe Place. 

The American scenery was very different from 
that of the flat Veluwe, the shore dunes, or the 
sunken polders of dear Patria. From the varied 
shores of Manhattan, high and rocky, low and 
sandy, shell-strewn or stony, gravel or beach, or 
from coign of vantage on hills, whether bare or 
bosky, or out of forest vistas, these pioneers feasted 
on the scenery. Across the narrow East Kiver 



14 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

rose the sand banks, or "Brooklyn Heights," a 
striking feature in the general flatness of that 
island of Seawanaka, or wampum-land of the 
Indians, but not called " Long " until nearly a 
century later. Across, on the sunset side, "the 
great rocks of Weehawken" towered above the 
meadows of the very low Hackensack valley. 
The columnar lines of the Palisades, frowning on 
the upper river's front and casting early and long 
afternoon shadows, mightily impressed men from 
a flat and sunken land. Their own writings show 
how handsomely the Netherlanders appraised their 
new possessions. The pages of Wassenaer fairly 
glow with enthusiastic description. Though ready 
to utilize their full resources, they looked for quick 
returns. So long as the wild animals, easily trapped 
or shot, carried a fortune on their backs, and the 
Indian demand was for metal goods and trinkets, 
nothing else paid like peltry. Besides, to fight the 
Spaniards and set Patria permanently free, ready 
cash was the first requirement. 

Yet there were those who heeded the beckoning 
of the shining waters and listened to the call of 
the woods. Block left oif " trucking," to win the 
prize promised to discoverers of new lands. We 
shall soon find him afloat. A new map meant 
credentials to fame. 

Three other Dutchmen from Fort Orange had 
some lively adventures inland during the year 
1614, and increased unwillingly Europe's know- 



THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 15 

ledge of American geography. Starting out with 
some Mohican Indians, they were made prisoners 
by the Iroquois and taken probably into the Sus- 
quehanna region. It is quite possible that, sup- 
posed to be Spaniards or Frenchmen, they were 
kept a while at the stronghold on " Spanish Hill " 
near Waverly, New York, and then, by way of the 
Delaware River, released or ransomed. Whatever 
may have been their full itinerary, these men gave 
information that was incorporated into a map, 
dated 1604-16, and discovered by Mr. Brodhead 
in the archives at the Hague. It is "the oldest 
muniment " for the history of the Empire State. 

When Skipper Block's vessel caught fire and 
became ashes and scrap iron, the doughty Dutch- 
man built a new yacht, the pioneer craft of the Em- 
pire State, the Onrust, or Restless, of sixteen tons. 
The map-makers had not yet known of the long 
sound stretching from Manhattan to Montauk. 
They had pictured New England as coming down 
to the ocean. From a hilltop on Manhattan, Block 
may have seen the agitated waters glistening in 
the morning sun, and named their place " Helder- 
Gat," or Shining Gate ; or he may have remem- 
bered the Hellegat, between Axel and Hulst in 
Zeeland. Passing eastward over the rapids and 
shallows of Hell Gate (the sunken fan-shaped 
rocks, which were blown up by General Gilmore in 
1877), Block was surprised to find what seemed 
to be an inland sea. Judging from the many senti- 



16 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

mental names, such as Lapwing's Point, Vale of 
Swans, Clover Nook, Children's Corner, given by 
the Dutch in America, it is just as likely that the " 
name " Hell" Gate (as in Helderberg, the Shining 
Hills) suggests heaven and its light, as their oppo- 
sites. Yet it may be only the rough sailors' dub- 
bing of a place difficult of navigation. He found 
the water, like the Hudson, salt, but he also learned 
by tasting that the big stream flowing in a rush 
from the north was sweet. 

Spending several weeks in exploration. Block 
put down on his map the Fresh (Connecticut) 
River ; Rood (red), or Rhode Island ; and many 
other names long since translated or corrupted 
into good, possible, or "Connecticut" English. 
In Dutch, Rood, like Roos in Roosevelt, is pro- 
nounced as Rhode, though thousands of Americans 
still say Russ-velt instead of Ros-e-velt. Block 
Island, reckoned in Newport County, and Block 
Island Sound perpetuate the skipper's name. 

Meanwhile interest in their possessions was in- 
creasing among the Dutch. Other merchants haz- 
arded their yachts in trans- Atlantic trade. So long 
at war with Spain, with all their energies engaged, 
they could not, even in time of truce, restrain 
themselves. 

Excitement, being in the air, did not need 
stimulus, but the Dutch Congress, in March, 1614, 
fed fuel to the flame by fresh offers. Whosoever 
should discover a new country and give informa- 



THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 17 

tion within a fortnight after his return, and then 
make four voyages to the new land, should have 
a monopoly of its trade. Quick to close with the 
offer, in July, 1614, a company of merchants, in 
six cities, in virtue of Henry Hudson's discovery, 
petitioned the States-General for a charter. 

This paper was as yet unacted upon, when, on 
October 1, Block, with his map, arrived in Hol- 
land. On the 11th he had the floor, and told of 
the lands and peoples he had seen. His chart, 
or " figurative map," revealed a new inland sea, 
a great island, numerous waterways, and a new 
entrance to Manhattan, besides locating rivers and 
Indian tribes. 

Clearly Block had the right of way over the 
Syndicate of the Six Cities, and on the same day 
a charter was issued to " The United New Nether- 
land Company." 

The official name given to the new-found land, 
discovered by Hudson and exploited by Block, 
was New Netherland, — not New Netherlands, as 
so many careless writers, and even book titles, 
public documents, and bronze tablets have it. The 
Dutch patriots gave the land of hope in America 
not a plural form, which might suggest the ten 
provinces that had left the covenant of freedom 
and gone back to Spain, but one that had recalled 
united Patria, — the seven free and independent 
states forming the Dutch Republic, now one coun- 
try and one nation. The new name reflected " the 



18 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Union," one and indivisible. It was and should be 
ever, in speech and writing. New Netherland. 

The actual history of Dutch exploration all 
over the world has been for the most part erased, 
like chalk lines from a school blackboard, by later 
persons, chiefly English, yet it is interesting to 
know the method in Dutch names. Sentiment and 
patriotism were predominant. In Java, Ceylon, 
Formosa, South America, the West Indies, and New 
Netherland, they recall Patria and its great men 
or their homes. There were many Staten islands, 
Mauritius rivers and lands, Sandy Hooks, Forts 
Nassau and Orange, Dunderbergs, Batavias, and 
names ending in " dam " and " dyke " all over the 
world. Kills, bergs, havens, gates, corners, wijks, 
and other hooks and eyes of geographical speech 
hold the landscape in the mind's map. 

Within the towns, whether in Java, India, or 
North America, are found a Maiden's Lane, a 
Broadway, a Wall and a High Street, besides 
canals and " grachts," new, old, or " gedempte," 
with short or long " paths." In addition to these 
were the same institutions of religion, fraternity, 
charity, police protection, prevention of fire, and 
the usual features of Dutch city government. 

In the churches, similar offices and customs 
existed. The original praiseworthy traits of char- 
acter — industry, honesty, devoutness, loyalty, 
patience, and cleanliness — are seen in the daily 
life of the people. These marked the Dutchman 



THE MANHATTAN PIONEERS 19 

in the Greater Netherlands, as surely as did 
the symbol of the lion minted on his guilder ; 
while the one sentiment which dominated all was 
that of William, "the Father of the Fatherland," 
— "I will maintain." 

The Dutchmen faced bravely their new respon- 
sibilities of national expansion. In Patria, a new 
school was called forth by the necessities of coloni- 
zation in Asia and America. Under the patronage 
of the India companies, the city of Leyden, which 
furnished the first settlers of both Massachusetts 
and New York, instituted a seminary for the train- 
ing of missionaries. It was founded in the same 
year, 1622, that saw the organization in Rome of 
the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Out 
of this Leyden school went forth famous scholars 
and teachers ; among others, George Candidus 
and Robert Junius of Formosa. The Dutch made 
good their professed desire to convert the abori- 
gines to a higher form of faith, and to uplift them 
through education, and their records show it. 
Henceforth the school and church, schoolmaster 
and Domine, were to go in the ship with the pioneers 
from Patria. By the terms of his call and ordination 
vows, the Domine served on both land and water. 

Such was the beginning of New Netherland. As 
explored and occupied by the Dutch, it included 
the region between the Connecticut and the Sus- 
quehanna rivers, watered by the streams rising in 
the Catskills and the Adirondacks. 



CHAPTER III 

JESSE DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 

The shiploads of American furs sold in Amster- 
dam set Dutch money-makers hot on the trail for 
more. Led by Usselinx, they urged in the State 
Legislature of Holland that a West India Com- 
pany be formed. Asia had enriched the Kepublic. 
Why should not New Netherland ? 

Not while the truce with Spain lasted could the 
national congress grant the petition of Usselinx; 
but in 1621, when war was renewed, consent was 
given. Then, like hounds from the leash, the 
Dutch leaped to lead all nations in commercial 
enterprise. In June, 1621, the West India Com- 
pany was chartered. The governor-general of the 
new corporation must be commissioned and ap- 
proved by the congress ; but, except on this point, 
its powers were sovereign. It could effect treaties 
and alliances with princes and potentates, erect 
forts, levy and arm soldiers, dispatch war vessels, 
plant colonies, carry on war, and establish govern- 
ment. Its products imported into Holland were 
free of all taxes for the space of eight years. Its 
proud flag bore the monogram Gr. W. C, for it 
possessed the coveted privileges of a Geoctrooyed, 
or chartered corporation with monopoly. 



DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 21 

This charter made possible the cradle history of 
America's greatest city. The first object was war 
against Spain. The second was commerce for the 
enrichment of the Dutch Republic. Hence the great 
powers granted to the company. In the Nether- 
lands were no mines and very little fertile soil. 
The life of the State must be maintained by riches 
won in and on the sea, and by trade with other 
lands. Holland in the seventeenth century had to 
do what Japan must do in the twentieth, in order 
to feed her people and maintain her growth. 
Hence the extraordinary commercial expansion 
of 1621. 

Nevertheless, it must be remembered that colo- 
nization was only one method chosen to enrich the 
mother country. The Company was not obliged 
to populate new lands in America. The charter 
word is may Qmogen)^ not must. There was no 
urgent call for a colony beyond the Atlantic, for 
Dutch people did not need or desire to leave Pa- 
tria. Religion was free, and employment and 
money were easy to get. 

Where, then, was the Republic, not at all over- 
populated, to get the colonists .? There was little 
to attract the native Hollander away from home, 
and a hundred men were ready to enlist as soldiers 
or sailors to fight or spoil the Spaniards to one 
willing to go out as a farmer in savage lands. How- 
ever, — and here is the secret of the initial emi- 
gration, — there were several hundred thousand for- 



22 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

eigners or "Walloons," living as guests in "the 
land where conscience was free," and some of these, 
especially in Leyden and Amsterdam, were ready 
to try a " hazard of new fortunes." 

Other companies of refugees for conscience' 
sake, besides " The Pilgrim Fathers of New Eng- 
land," were in Leyden ; for the city was then re- 
covering grandly from its famous siege. The cloth 
trade attracted work-people from many countries, 
who had churches according to their own tastes. 
All these, whatever their language, were " Walsh " 
or " Walloons," that is, foreigners. Out of Ley- 
den came the first colonists who settled both New 
England and New Netherland. 

Generous offers were made first to the "Pil- 
grims" or English refugees, but these wanted a 
convoy of war vessels, to protect them against 
pirates and Spaniards, which the Government 
could not then spare. 

The real colonizer of New Netherland was Jesse 
de Forest, a Walloon, born between 1570 and 
1580 at Avesnes, then in the Netherlands, but 
now, and since 1819, in France, who was in Ley- 
den in 1605 pursuing his trade as a dyer. In this 
city, four of his ten children were born, his son 
Isaac, who became the father of the American 
de Forests, seeing the light in 1616. Becoming 
interested in emigration to America, or " the West 
Indies," he made an application in June, 1621, 
through Sir Dudley Carleton, the English envoy, 



DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 23 

in the name of fifty-six Walloon families to go to 
" Virginia." When the answer of King James was 
received, it was not satisfactory. 

So on August 27, 1622, Jesse de Forest peti- 
tioned the States-General for permission to enroll 
families, who should settle in New Netherland. 
His petition was allowed. It was his company that 
embarked on the first colonizing ship, the New 
Netherland, to make homes and begin the settle- 
ment of the Empire State. 

In the Leyden archives, we hear nothing fur- 
ther directly from Jesse, except that he had left 
for America. His brother, Gerard de Forest, peti- 
tioned the burgomasters of Leyden, saying that his 
brother Jesse "had lately gone to the West Indies," 
— a general name for America, — and he asked 
permission to replace his brother in his position, 
according to the regulations of the city and guild. 
The records of the City Council show that this 
paper was sent by the magistrates for advice to 
the Aldermen of the Dyers' Guild, and that per- 
mission in due form was given to Gerard de For- 
est to take his brother's place as a master-dyer. 
Jesse de Forest deserves honor as leader of the first 
band of thirty-one families from Leyden, who be- 
gan the community of homes in New Netherland. 

As these people, who were willing to try their 
fortune in America, did not ask for the protection 
of big frigates, their request was quickly granted. 
The first-class new ship of two hundred and sixty 



24 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tons, roomy and clean, took Jesse de Forest's first 
party of thirty-one families over sea. A small 
armed yacht, the Mackerel, commanded by Cap- 
tain Cornelis J. May, was to convoy them past the 
pirates of Dunkirk and across the Atlantic. 

The larger of these historic vessels, like its 
fellows of those days, had no jib. Instead of the 
bowsprit of modern days, with its stays, a spar 
projected forward, on which two or three little 
square sails could be spread. The main place of 
habitation for passengers was in "the tower," of 
two stories, very high and with two rows of ports 
or windows. The stern view of the New Nether- 
land, with its affluence of carving and emblems, 
and a mighty lamp at the top, which illuminated 
the back track, was most imposing. High over 
all flew the great orange, white, and blue flag, 
with the triple monogram G. W. C, that is. The 
(Geoctrooyed, or) Chartered West [India] Com- 
pany. This pioneer Dutch ship, eighty tons larger 
than the Mayflower, was probably three times the 
size of Henry Hudson's yacht. 

All merchant vessels went armed in those days, 
and the New Netherland was prepared to fight, in 
case Spaniard or Dunkirker hove in sight. Besides 
carrying the flag of the Republic at the mizzen 
and peak, she was ready to poke out cold iron 
noses from the portholes and blaze forth fire and 
shot if attacked. Plenty of " iron beans " for the 
cannon were on board. 



DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 25 

We do not know all the details of Jesse de 
Forest's life, but we can trace him in the Nether- 
lands from city to city and from communion table 
to communion table, for he was, first of all, a Bible 
Christian. Religion was the first care with his colo- 
nists. Arrangements were made with the reverend 
Classis of Amsterdam for church officers to provide 
cheer and consolation. These being duly furnished, 
in March, 1623, fathers and mothers, boys and girls, 
said good-by to their friends in hospitable Hol- 
land and cleared for the land of hope beyond the 
Atlantic. Truce was over, and mighty Dutch 
fleets sailed to Angola in Africa and to Brazil to 
conquer the Portuguese and Spanish possessions, 
but this single ship, almost tiny in contrast, bore 
freight of peaceful colonists who were to begin the 
homes of the future Empire State of the American 
Union, and Jesse de Forest was the soul of the 
enterprise. It may be that they did not see Man- 
hattan until 1624. 

These beginners of our Middle States and the 
men who sent them over were neither dreamers 
nor " humorists." They stood for pure family life, 
for the Church and the school, and for farming, 
the true source of all legitimate national wealth of 
land-dwellers, for they were, most of them, either 
skilled workmen or tillers of the soil. They were 
not likely, when landed, to go hunting in the woods 
for gold or silver mines. They did not come with 
their brains full of spectres of mythology, such as 



26 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

drove the Spaniards into waterless deserts to seek 
the Gilded Man, Fountains of Youth, the Seven 
Cities of Cibola, and various other things that 
exist only in fairyland. They had once given up 
home and all that was dear to them, when driven 
out of the Belgic Netherlands, and had fled to 
Holland to enjoy freedom of conscience. The Re- 
public was now their own Patria, and they were 
about to trust God again and seek homes in the 
New World. They were the real settlers of New 
Netherland, " John Company " being merely the 
figurehead and money-maker. Among these thirty- 
one families, with children and young men and 
maidens of marriageable age, the adults in the 
company, of course, spoke French. Bible-reading 
and singing of the psalms in Marot's version were 
part of the daily routine of a Walloon family. The 
Belgic Confession of Faith, which many of the 
adults knew by heart, was their foundation creed, 
as it was of the Dutch National Church, already 
established for over a half -century. It was first 
written in French in 1561, by Guido de Bres, who 
was burnt by the Spaniards in 1567. In its re- 
vised Dutch form of 1619 the children learned it 
thoroughly. The keynote of its deep harmonies is 
sounded in Article I : " God . . . the overflowing 
fountain of all good." 

The young folks born in Leyden, who had at- 
tended the Dutch public schools, spoke the lan- 
guage of the captain and crew and of Patria. They 



DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 27 

were in effect young Dutchmen, and loyal to tlie 
Kepublic and to the orange, white, and blue flag. 
Every ship had its " Comforter of the sick," who 
was well versed in the Holy Scriptures, and the 
form of words duly provided in the familiar lit- 
urgy of the National Church. 

Happily no Dunkirkers or Spaniards challenged 
those pioneer ships, and they may have remained 
some time in the West Indies, but on entering the 
Narrows in New York Bay, possibly early in 1624, 
the Netherlanders saw a French vessel lying at 
anchor. Not willing to tolerate a stranger, the 
Mackerel ran out her guns and showed the neces- 
sity of departure. The Frenchmen took the hint 
at once, and the Dutch were left alone. 

Like a sower, going forth to sow in the seed 
bed of a future empire, was Captain May in the 
good, clean ship New Netherland. Each of the 
new settlements was called a " concentration," — • 
after the Spanish term. Eighteen of the passen- 
gers were left on Manhattan, and these were the 
first families from Europe to dwell upon the island ; 
but the settlement, if at first called New Avesnes, 
was destined to be New Amsterdam and New 
York. Several couples disembarked on the land 
named after the seven States of the Dutch Repub- 
lic, Staten Island. In a hocht^ or bend in the East 
River, several families made a settlement. This 
loop, or cove, was, like Walkill, later called the 
Waal, or Walloon's Boght, or Wallabout. 



28 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Eighteen families were planted on the site o£ 
the future city of Albany, and left under the com- 
mand of Adrian Joris, lieutenant to Captain May. 
Fort Orange, a redoubt with four angles, was 
built and armed with cannon that fired stone 
balls for defense. Inside this inclosure, Sarah, the 
first baby of the colonists, was born, in June, 1625. 
Her father's name, as he wrote it in Walloon 
French, was Simon de Rapello, but the Dutch 
of it is Simon Rapelye. Her mother's name was 
du Trieux, in modern form, Truax. In a year or 
two, cradles were in demand. Fathers were ready 
to make these out of rough timber with barrel- 
head rockers, but the mothers " drew the line " 
here, and the importation of Dutch cradles from 
Holland into New Netherland was quite frequent 
until the year 1664. 

A better defense than Fort Orange, with its 
cannon and gunpowder, was a league of peace 
made with the "wilden" of the forest and the 
river, that is, the Iroquois and the Mohicans. This 
covenant of friendship was perpetual. In succeed- 
ing years, when the people at Esopus and on Man- 
hattan were in terror and saw fire, blood, and 
devastation, those at Fort Orange found the red 
men " as quiet as lambs." From the beginning to 
the end of the Dutch rule in America this, the 
northern end of the colony, was the most peaceful, 
the best governed, and, on the whole, the most 
prosperous portion of New Netherland. Manhat- 



DE FOREST AND THE HOME-MAKERS 29 

tan was cosmopolitan. The distinctively Dutch 
part of the colony and province lay in the Hudson 
and Mohawk valleys. Civic life in New Nether- 
land was typical, not on the manors or the island, 
but in the village communities of free farmers, as 
on Long Island, at Schenectady, Esopus, and New 
Paltz. 



CHAPTER IV 

PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 

In the new domain, the favorite seat of ad- 
ministration seems at first to have been on the 
Delaware, rather than on the Hudson. 

Captain May, after one year, was succeeded by 
William Verhulst, whose name happily no English 
map-maker has rubbed out, for it is recalled in 
" Verhulsten Island," and perhaps in "Hollanders' 
Creek" near Philadelphia. This colony seemed 
so promising that it was determined to have a 
director-general for New Netherland. He was to 
be advised by a council of five members. Besides 
these, who were not Walloons but Hollanders, 
there were to be a secretary and a treasurer. 

In other words, here was a civil government, 
which was a miniature of the Dutch municipal 
system, and a manifestation of the Netherlands 
genius for city organization. It came to pass that 
all the cities in the American colonies up to the 
time of the Revolution were Dutch ; and, except 
Albany, all these cities lay along a line stretching 
from New York to Philadelphia. All the other 
settlements in the thirteen colonies, from Georgia 
to New Hampshire, were towns or villages. 

Let us see who it was that the Company se- 



PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 31 

lected as the first Civil Governor or Director- 
General of New Netherland. Every time we pass 
down Fifth Avenue, at Twenty-ninth and at 
Forty-seventh Street, we may read his name on 
the bronze tablets set in the Reformed Dutch 
Church edifices standing on these corners. Of this 
church he was a deacon. A grand gentleman and 
a cosmopolitan character was Peter Minuit, who 
may be called the founder of the greatest and the 
smallest states, New York and Delaware, in the 
American Union. We may pronounce his name 
Minawee, as he sometimes wrote it, to ease some 
tongues. His ancestors were Huguenots, but this 
cultivated gentleman spoke French, Dutch, and 
probably German and English, being thus a proto- 
type of the composite American, superbly fitted 
to be a pioneer and ruler. 

Receiving his commission six days before 
Christmas, 1625, he began at once to equip him- 
self for his great work of transforming trading- 
stations into agricultural communities. He found 
out all he could about the soil and climate of New 
Netherland. Then he selected carefully seeds, live 
stock, farmers' tools, food plants, and other useful 
vegetables. With his council, except the secretary, 
he sailed in the ship Sea Mew from Amsterdam, 
December 19, 1625. After many delays, from con- 
trary winds and other causes, he sighted Sandy 
Hook, May 4, 1626. 

Minuit's first official act, eighteen years before 



32 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

William Penn was born, set for Puritan and 
Cavalier, as well as for proprietors of colonies in 
America, a noble precedent. He carried out, ac- 
cording to the letter and wholly in the spirit, his 
directions as set down in the Charter of the Com- 
pany. He called together the Indian chiefs and 
purchased of them the island named Manhattan, 
for what was for them the very generous sum of 
sixty guilders, or twenty-four dollars. In modern 
values, this would be about three hundred dollars. 
As expressed in trinkets, mirrors, hatchets, tools, 
and clothing stuffs, it must have seemed like a 
mountain of wealth to the Indians. The place of 
sale may have been the Bowling Green, then the 
heart of the hamlet of New Amsterdam. 

Governor Minuit's secretary, who had arrived 
in the ship Arms of Amsterdam, July 26, 1625, 
was Isaac de Easieres. As was very proper for one 
who was to have a good deal to do with Walloons 
or French-speaking Belgian colonists, he could 
talk and write French. He had the pen of a ready 
writer, and to him we owe a unique and pictur- 
esque account of the Pilgrim settlement at Ply- 
mouth. 

A fort must be built for defense, as the ships 
of any nation could easily enter the river from the 
sea, a fact which made New Amsterdam from the 
very first a cosmopolitan place, filled with visitors 
and sailors speaking many languages. Dutch army 
engineers had then no superiors in the world. 



PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 33 

The greatest of them, Prince Maurice, had died 
at the Hague, April 23, 1625, the year before ; but 
one of his officers, Kryn Frederickse, came over 
with Minuit. He laid out and began building an 
earthwork with four bastions, named Fort Am- 
sterdam after the home city. In 1635 the fortifica- 
tion was faced on the inside with cut stone and 
good masonry, and the outside was sodded and made 
beautifully verdant. This fort had a varied history, 
and as kings rose and fell it was called after James, 
William, Anne, and George. De Kasieres first pro- 
posed the name, " The Battery," but not until 
Leisler threw up entrenchments beyond and sea- 
ward, was this term much used. In 1789 the ram- 
parts were leveled, and in 1818 a marble column 
was erected on the spot. Now the great new Custom 
House, with groups of sculpture symbolical of the 
four continents, and many historic figures, includ- 
ing one of Admiral Tromp, occupies the site. 

Doctor Wassenaer of Amsterdam, who printed 
the news of the world in his day, is our chief 
authority as to how things looked on Manhattan 
before 1630. East of the fort, where now towers 
the Merchants' Building, were four or five shops 
or warehouses of " stone," or hard burned brick. 
" Winkle" means a shop, or storehouse, and Rip 
van Winkle is Rip from the shop, or Rip the store- 
keeper. The name of Winkle Street, now built 
over, long kept these first shops in memory. Pearl 
Street, laid out in 1633, may have been called so 



34 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

first by the children who picked up and played 
with the pearly shells then lining the beach facing 
the bay. 

The Netherlanders being an intensely religious 
people, the desire of the colonists was to have wor- 
ship at once, and the two Comforters of the sick, 
Sebastian Jansen Krol and Jan Huyck, who came 
over withMinuit, were active in their ministrations. 

Thus the very beginnings of the foundations of 
New York State were laid in praise and prayer to 
God, and with provision made for human need 
and suffering and for spiritual aspirations. The 
creed most often recited was that traditionally 
named the "Apostles'," which the Dutch call 
" The Twelve Articles of the Christian Faith." 

At this time there were still living at Leyden 
many English colonists who later went to America 
and joined the company of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
and the Walloons in New Netherland knew them. 

As fellow Christians, it was meet that the Man- 
hattaners and Plymouth folk, neighbors, on both 
sides of the Atlantic, should be friends, especially 
since both professed to have crossed the ocean and 
come to America to convert the savages to the doc- 
trines of the Prince of Peace. Nevertheless, it was 
not yet time for the united Continental America 
of 1776, and the jealous quarrels and wars of the 
countries and kingdoms of Europe had already, 
in 1623, been transferred to America. They were 
to last until after the Spanish War of 1900, and 



PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 35 

until the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine put 
an end to the long strifes and bloodsheddings in- 
herited from Europe. 

Although the Dutch asserted ownership to New 
Netherland by the triple rights of discovery, 
prompt occupation, and colonization, the British 
Government wanted the whole of North America, 
under the flimsy pretext of Cabot's discovery in 
1497, when he peeped at portions of the coast. 
Hence in 1623, since England claimed as part of 
Virginia the territory on which the Dutch had 
settled while the W^est India Company called the 
land its own, there was danger of a collision. The 
governors of Manhattan and Plymouth had ex- 
changed letters in Dutch, for Bradford, like most 
of the young people of Plymouth, especially those 
born in Holland, could read and write that lan- 
guage. In his letter of 1629, Bradford put on record 
the kind treatment which the Pilgrims had received, 
and which some were still enjoying in Leyden, — 
" for which we are bound to be thankful and our 
children after us." Thus Bradford, possibly the 
greatest of the Pilgrims, himself furnished, in spirit 
and letter, the inscription in bronze placed by the 
Boston Congregational Club in 1906 on the walls 
of the Dutch Church at Delf shaven, now part of 
Rotterdam. 

Nevertheless correspondence did not fully an- 
swer the case, and the Manhattan and Plymouth 
men must see one another face to face. Since Brad- 



36 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ford had requested it, Governor Minuit sent his 
secretary, Isaac de Easieres, with a squad of sol- 
diers and one of the trumpeters of the Republic, 
on a mission to the Pilgrim settlement. Perhaps 
this sounder of parleys may have been Anthony van 
Curler, who, like his fellow music-making patriots, 
was proud of his fringed pendant of red, white, 
and blue silk hung on his trumpet. De Rasieres 
embarked on the good ship Nassau. One may pic- 
ture the ceremonious reception on the shore, not 
far from the famous Plymouth Rock that lives 
colossal in poetry and after-dinner rhetoric. 

The presents from Manhattan, consisting of 
three kinds of cloth, a chest of white sugar, and 
some small wares, were offered and received. The 
Plymouth people gave in exchange some of their 
own home-grown tobacco, for the new Yankees 
were ahead of the " Knickerbockers " in the to- 
bacco business. But far greater than any gifts of 
food, or wear, or ammunition for pipe-smoke, was 
the enriching lesson in practical economics which 
the skilled traders from the foremost commercial 
country in Europe taught the Pilgrims. De Rasi- 
eres introduced into Plymouth the Indian shell 
money, or wampum, made by stringing the perfo- 
rated shells into belts, or bands. 

Had Governor Minuit been allowed to continue 
the development of New Netherland according to 
his own ideas, its story might have been one of 
nearly continuous peace and prosperity. His zeal 



PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 37 

and energy in promoting agriculture have left their 
marks on the Empire State even to this day. He 
wisely distributed among white men the seeds and 
grafts which caused gardens to grow and orchards 
to spring up, and which among the Indians began 
their march to the Cayuga Lake region and the 
Niagara plateau. The Long House of the Iroquois 
became famous for the variety and richness of its 
fruits and vegetables. 

Determined to prove to the Company what could 
be done in the New World, and to reveal the 
wealth of naval stores of all kinds in the colony, 
Minuit inaugurated the enterprise of ship-building, ^^ 
He laid the keel of the second vessel to receive 
the name of New Netherland, which when afloat 
was as big as a ship of the line in the Dutch navy. 
To get the timber of proper length and quality he 
sent his axemen into the region of the Mohawk 
VaUey. This magnificent ship, pierced for thirty 
cannon and registered at eight hundred tons bur- 
then, was launched, loaded, and sent to Holland. 
There it made a sensation. It was seen that the 
colony could be made the basis of offensive naval 
war against the Spaniards. 

Yet the fur trade was the main source of imme- 
diate wealth, and next to securing the comfort 
and safety of the colonists, this was Minuit's chief 
concern. Many were the ships loaded with peltries 
which he dispatched to Amsterdam. In 1630 the 
imports amounted to 113,000 guilders, while the 



38 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

exports, chiefly furs, were 130,000, making a hand- 
some profit to the Company. 

In return more emigrant vessels from Patria, 
with hopeful planters and fresh cargoes of neces- 
sities for field, house, and garden, crossed the At- 
lantic. The frames of not a few buildings and 
frequent loads of brick taken as ballast were sent 
to take the places of the temporary bark structures 
or log cabins. The thousand little contrivances 
so common in Holland, calculated to make home 
comfortable, were shipped in quantities. Interest- 
ing are the frequent references in " the Amster- 
dam Correspondence " to the invoices of books, 
Bibles, catechisms, and hymn-books, sent to sup- 
ply the various needs of school, pulpit, study, and 
worship. The Dutch were a reading people, and 
in no country were the printed page, the bound 
book, and the engraving cheaper than in Hol- 
land. 

Nevertheless, in spite of all the efforts made to 
attract Dutch colonists to the new lands beyond 
sea, emigration was slow. Why should any native 
want to leave the triumphant Republic ? So some- 
thing must be done to increase Dutch population 
in America. 

Minuit's excellent plans were upset. In their 
greed for more money, certain shrewd members of 
the West India Company took the step which in- 
troduced feudalism on American soil. Instead of 
progress, their seeming enterprise was reversion 



PETER MINUIT, FIRST CIVIL GOVERNOR 39 

towards the mediaevalism from which the Dutch 
had long before delivered themselves. They re- 
called Minuit, at whose story and fortunes we shall 
glance again. 



CHAPTER V 

THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE 

The career of the first Domine, or reverend 
pastor, in New Netherland, shows how rich life was 
under the risen sun of the Dutch Kepublic, then 
the land of opportunity. Whether in the army, 
navy, merchant marine, trade, diplomacy, law, 
medicine, or theology, there was not only sure pro- 
motion for the alert and diligent, but a fair chance 
of advancement to " everybody that was anybody." 

The Reverend Jonas Michaelius, or, in plain 
Dutch, Michel, was born in 1577, and was educated 
in Holland's public schools. When twenty-three 
years old he went to the great University of Ley- 
den, then in its lion-like youth, and matriculated 
September 6, 1600. He was a student at the same 
time with Jacob Cats and Vossius. He received 
his heroep^ or call, to two villages in North Hol- 
land, and was settled as pastor at Hem, from 1612 
to 1614, on a salary of seventy-five guilders, or 
thirty dollars. Then he took himself a wife, who 
bore him three daughters. 

Though now but a place of six or seven hun- 
dred people Hem has an interesting history. Its 
story during feudalism, its elevation to the rank of 
a city with citizen-rights, magistracy, and govern- 



THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE 41 

ment, its part in the bread-and-cheese riots of 
1492 and the fine imposed upon it therefor, the 
documents relating to its disputes and arbitrations 
with other cities, its cooperation during the war 
for freedom, without money or price, to fortify the 
city of Hoorn against the Spaniards, and its inde- 
pendence of manorial rights make very interesting 
subjects of study to medisevalists. 

The young parson did not fear adventures by 
land or sea. When, in 1624, Admiral Piet Hein 
took Brazil, Michaelius went out to be minister of 
the Dutch church at Bahia, or San Salvador. The 
Portuguese recaptured the place next year, and 
Domine Michaelius then became chaplain of the 
fort in Guinea. He came back to Holland in 1627. 
On two continents. South America and Africa, he 
learned to know all sorts, conditions, and char- 
acters of men of many colors. One of his voyages 
was made with a man, then first mate, who later 
as captain took him to' America. Michaelius had 
" roamed about with him a great deal, even lodged 
in the same hut, but never knew that he was such 
a brute and drunkard." After a stormy voyage, 
the Domine, his three little daughters, and their 
mother arrived on Manhattan, January 24, 1628. 

The hardships were too much for the Domine's 
wife. She died after being in the new country only 
a few weeks, and her body filled one of the first 
graves in the little cemetery. The poor widower 
mourned piteously, " without her society and assist- 



42 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ance," when thus left with motherless children in 
a wild land, but he set bravely at work to bury 
his sorrows in scholarly toil and sweet human 
ministrations. 

Coming from a land flowing with milk and 
cream, and rich in fruits and vegetables, cheese 
and eggs, the parson found these articles on Man- 
hattan were rare and high-priced. At first, he 
and his little family had to live on ship's rations, 
beans, gray peas, barley, and stock fish. All this 
was different from the fare on the bountiful ta- 
bles of Holland. The coming winter seemed hard 
enough. The fur business was dull, for the Iroquois 
from the north were ravaging the land of the 
Mohican Indians. Splendid American oak and 
hickory timber was being cut and carried back to 
the Fatherland, but ships were few. A windmill 
was in course of erection, to saw the wood, and the 
gristmill was already in operation. Brick-making 
had begun, but skilled labor was lacking. Oyster 
shells for lime were abundant, and both land and 
water were full of food. 

These great heaps of shells were like the sweep- 
ings of the mint, for they were what was left over 
after the squaws had broken out the blue eye spots 
from the clam shells and the tops of the univalves, 
to make Indian money or wampum. In those an- 
cient accumulations one rarely finds a perfect shell. 
The squaws were surprised to see such refuse 
burnt to make good white lime. 



THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE 43 

Michaelius concludes a long inventory of the 
resources of the New Netherland by saying, " The 
country is good and pleasant, the climate is healthy, 
notwithstanding the sudden changes of cold and 
heat. The sun is very warm, the winter is strong 
and severe, and continues fully as long as in our 
country." Plenty of furs and fuel were needed. 
" The best remedy is not to spare the wood, of 
which there is enough, and to cover one's self with 
rough skins, which can be easily obtained." 

This first Dutch pastor, like his American suc- 
cessors and his brethren at home, was always 
addressed as " Domine," which means master or 
rector. Our dictionaries have been corrupted by 
the Scotch method of spelling " dominie," which 
was unknown in the records or in American Eng- 
lish until the New York Dutch were swamped as 
to numbers by British emigrants. This form of 
address, " Domine," was, and is, respectful, affec- 
tionate, and honorable. One American printer, 
who recently mixed up the " stickit minister's " 
title with that of his Divine Master, thus mis- 
printed the Vulgate Scriptures, "Dominie Quo 
Vadis " ! The Dutch domines in America were 
university graduates in almost every instance, and 
most of them were gentlemen of high breeding 
and scholarship. Dominie means a schoolmaster, 
and in this form is not a Dutch word. It is always 
Domine in the records of Patria. 

Without desiring to be a busybody, Michaelius 



44 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

gave his opinion as to what ought to be done to 
make the Manhattan settlement a model one. He 
asked from home for copies of the Acts of the 
Synod, " both the special one relating to this re- 
gion and those which were provincial and national." 

Having been in Africa, he could judge fairly- 
well concerning certain of the red man's deficien- 
cies, but his theological prejudices, being those of 
his age, rendered him hardly able to appraise 
fairly the Indian's moral worth. He was not well 
impressed with the first families of America as 
represented by the Algonquin Indians, whom he 
found " entirely savage and wild, strangers to all 
decency, yea, uncivil and stupid as garden poles/* 
And indeed as compared with the Iroquois, who 
were much more advanced in social, political, and 
economical life, the Manhattan savages were rather 
low in the scale of humanity. The men of the in- 
land woods considered the river Indians south of 
them as fit objects for contempt and vengeance. 

The intercourse between the white and the red 
men was carried on by signs. Most of the Dutch 
children and some adults picked up a certain 
amount of the Indian language, but they could 
not understand the savages when talking among 
themselves. The Domine's heart yearned for the 
little folks in the woods. " It would be well, then, 
to leave the parents as they are, and begin with 
the children who are still young." 

The widower had difficulty with his housekeep- 



THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE 45 

ing, for his daughters were quite young and maid 
servants were few indeed. Already there were 
African slaves from Angola and the mouth of the 
Congo, — " thievish, lazy, and useless trash." 

His first letter reveals thus very early the one 
great trial which vexed the matrons of New Neth- 
erland most severely in the colony's early days. 
The lack of good domestic help did not arise be- 
cause no housemaids came from Holland, for, in 
fact, the rosy-cheeked girls and women of mar- 
riageable age crossed the Atlantic in considerable 
numbers, but usually at the expense of their mis- 
tresses. The stipulation was made that they should 
repay the cost of their passage, if they left the serv- 
ice of their patrons before a definite period. Yet, 
almost as soon as they landed, the maids were 
courted by young Dutchmen who were doing well 
and wanted wives. Among the colonial documents 
extant are those of Dutch ladies who had brought 
over young women as servants, and who were in a 
surprisingly short time left to do their own work. 
The ladies complained because some Jan, Dirck, 
or Claes wanted their Trintje, Annetje, or Alida, 
for his bride. They demanded from the would-be 
bridegrooms the money they had paid out for 
the maidens' passage. Neither Indians nor the first 
negro slaves made good servants, but later a better 
class of blacks came in and did well in household 
service. 

At the first opportunity Domine Michaelius, 



46 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

having visited the people in their bark houses and 
reed huts, proposed to organize a church. For his 
deacons he chose Governor Minuit and Captain 
Krol from up the river at Fort Orange. 

The Dutch were not at all behind the founders 
of Massachusetts or Virginia in worship, while 
they were ahead of them in completed church life. 
The first fully organized Reformed, or Protestant, 
Church in America began on Manhattan in 1628. 
By this is meant not merely a place of worship, as 
at Jamestown, nor part of the congregation with 
lay elders, as at Plymouth, but the full corporation, 
with salaried minister, board of officers, and com- 
municants forming a congregation, — members in 
good standing, bringing letters from the churches in 
the home land, or uniting on confession of faith. 
Such was the first Dutch church in North America, 
and such there was not in Virginia or Massachu- 
setts. This association of adults, already baptized in 
the Christian faith and uniting together as pastor 
and officers, met every Sabbath for divine worship, 
scriptural instruction, the use and enjoyment of 
the sacraments, and the propagation of the faith. 
They were banded together under the forms of 
order, doctrine, and discipline of the National Re- 
formed Church of the Netherlands for spiritual 
culture, the dispensing of charity, help of the poor, 
comfort to the bereaved, and consolation to the 
sick. For the present, " the Church in the Fort " 
was gathered in the loft of the horse mill. 



THE FIRST CHURCH AND DOMINE 47 

One of the first houses of industry which the 
Dutch Jack built in his new country was for the 
grinding of grain into meal. The flour barrels still 
to be seen on the city's coat of arms, though added 
afterwards, tell a tale of one of the first industries 
(and one of the later monopolies) on Manhattan. 
A circular trough or track was dug in the ground, 
its bottom floored with brick, and a huge mill- 
stone was made to roll in this trough, the wheel 
grinding the grain to meal. One end of the long 
axle was fixed in an upright pole for a spindle, 
and a horse, hitched to the farther end, made his 
monotonous round. Later, iron-hooped burr mill- 
stones made in the southern Netherlands turned 
out fine flour. When these no longer served their 
purpose, they were " cast out and trodden under 
foot of man," serving as paving-stones. 

The horse mill, located in the rear of what is 
now Nos. 20 and 28 South William Street, was a 
two-storied affair, and was occupied by the parson 
or precentor and worshipers on Sundays. On the 
first floor were the mill and accommodation for 
man and beast. On the second floor were the bags 
of flour. Here, amid these supplies of food for the 
body, the Dutch people met to prevent spiritual 
famine and feed their souls with heavenly bread. 
A carpenter could easily put together the timber 
for a pulpit, on which the fore-reader could read 
a sermon and the creed, offer a prayer from the 
liturgy, and start the psalm tune, or the Domine 



48 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

preach and pray. Here were sung the uplifting 
Hebrew psalms, done into mother-speech and set 
to the tones of the long-drawn Gregorian chant, 
as in dear Patria. Here were read the grand sen- 
tences, with their rich cadences of Calvin's " Form 
for the Administration of the Lord's Supper," the 
heart of which beats in the words, " We seek our 
life out of ourselves in God." 

All important is the history of " the Reformed 
Church in America," because the highest Dutch 
social life was closely associated with the Church, 
and was from the first found in its largest and 
fullest form in the congregations. The Church 
nourished a spirit of democracy, besides maintain- 
ing the schools and culture after the English con- 
quered New Netherland and the royal governors 
abolished the public schools. Then the Church, 
from its pastors, precentors, and educated men, 
had to furnish and support teachers for the girls 
and boys. The Reformed Dutch Church was the 
seedbed for the sprouting of American and Conti- 
nental, as opposed to aristocratic British notions. 
The language, customs, traditions, and best inher- 
itances of Patria lingered longest, and are to-day 
found most notably in the Reformed churches in 
the East and West of our country. When New 
Netherland ceased to be, the Dutch Church and 
people still remained a potent element in the mak- 
ing of the American man and the world's grandest 
political structure. 



CHAPTER VI 

WALTER VAN TWILLER, DIRECTOR- GENERAL 

The funny fellows, botli penmefi and artists, 
who saw American Dutchmen a century or two 
after New Netherland had passed away, and who 
have essayed to write or picture the history of 
New Amsterdam, give us the impression that most 
of the Dutch colonists were old and fat, stupid, 
choleric, and lazy, and lived in a cloud of tobacco 
smoke. Thus these caricaturists cast a glow more 
humorous than luminous over the early history of 
the State of New York. In picturing van Twiller, 
the successor of Minuit, some of them have made 
a big blunder, for they have confounded father 
and son. They have set before us their idea of 
the fourth Director of New Netherland, from the 
father, Walter van Twiller, born in 1580, instead 
of the real person, his son, Walter, who first 
saw the light, as the Nijkerk records show. May 
22, 1606. So far from being the aged, fat, and 
overgrown person represented in caricature. Van 
Twiller was youthful and inexperienced, and his 
faults were those of a young man unused to au- 
thority and hampered by his instructions. 

In Guelderland, the van Twiller estate, men- 
tioned as early as A. D. 1530, lay in the hamlet of 



50 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Schlechtenhorst in the Nijkerk Commune. Wolter, 
or Wouter, as the old spelling is, was betrothed 
with Marita van Rensselaer, daughter of Henrick, 
July 11, 1605, and was married three weeks later. 
Walter, their son, the future Director, was the 
firstborn in a family of nine children, sons and 
daug-hters. Several of the sons came to New 
Netherland in the service of their uncle, Kilian 
van Rensselaer. 

The West India Company, instead of choos- 
ing Isaac de Rasieres Director- General, appointed 
Walter van Twiller, who was taken as a clerk from 
the counting-house at Amsterdam. Though with 
some experience on a cattleship voyage to America, 
he was, when but twenty-seven years old (instead 
of fifty-three), made Governor of New Nether- 
land. He showed more energy, perhaps, in de- 
veloping the colony than wisdom in dealing with 
men. He was an expert agriculturist, an energetic 
manager, a steadfast friend, a shrewd diploma- 
tist, and a most gallant admirer and protector of 
women. His chief fault lay in being "a jolly good 
fellow." He was too fond of drinking, and withal 
too ready to be the nephew of his uncle in enrich- 
ing himself and his family connections at the 
expense of the Company. One can read his true 
story in the Van Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts, 
published in 1908 by the New York State Educa- 
tion Department. 

There was very good reason, also, why van 



DIRECTOR-GENERAL VAN TWILLER 61 

T wilier seemed to be slow in both judgment and ac- 
tion, when any question of hostilities with the Eng- 
lish came up. However much the Yankees might 
crowd out the Dutchmen in Connecticut or trespass 
even upon New Netherland's home domain, van 
Twiller had strict orders from the Company and 
from the States-General not to make war. In 1633 
Spain was yet unbeaten. The Dutch war of inde- 
pendence, not yet over, was to last fifteen years 
longer. Holland and England having made an al- 
liance of friendship, it was manifestly impossible 
for van Twiller, in dealing with trespassers, to 
take such measures against Englishmen as would 
result in bloodshed. It was expected that the King 
would restrain his subjects. 

Spain was renewing her activities in war, and 
the Dunkirk pirates were lively when the Company 
sent over the new Director-General in the warship 
Salt Mountain, with twenty cannon and one hun- 
dred and four soldiers, under Captain Hesse. Con- 
rad Notelman was the schout, or sheriff. Besides 
these worthies, there were the typical Dutch re- 
inforcements, the Domine, Rev. Everardus Bo- 
gardus, and the accredited schoolmaster, Adam 
Roelandsen, and Jacob van Curler, his young 
friend, schoolmate, and relative from Nijkerk. 
They often went gunning together in the New, as 
they had done in the Old Netherland. 

Only a few days after the new Director had ar- 
rived, he found out how forward the Englishmen 



62 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

were in trading wherever they pleased ; well know- 
ing, as they did, not only how weak their own 
King Charles was, but how anxious the Dutch were 
to avoid rupture with him. 

Jacob Eelkins, who in 1618, in the employ of 
Amsterdam Dutch merchants, had built Fort Nas- 
sau on the Hudson River (near Albany) and made 
a compact of peace with the Iroquois and sold 
them firearms, was now in the employ of a London 
firm of merchants. He knew the exact state of 
political affairs, and was familiar with the talk in 
England. On April 13, 1633, on a vessel named 
the William and flying the English flag, he ap- 
peared in the Hudson River and was moving north- 
ward. Van Twiller ordered him to stop and come 
ashore. Eelkins obeyed, but claimed that he was 
in Virginia on English property and had a right 
to trade with the savages. Van Twiller denied 
this, but let him go on deck again. What was 
his surprise to see Eelkins weigh anchor and pro- 
ceed up the river. Thereupon, instead of firing on 
the bold poacher, the impulsive young Governor 
ordered a barrel of wine to the river shore and in- 
vited everybody to drink at the Company's ex- 
pense. He proposed the health of Prince Frederick 
Henry, the power-holder of the Netherlands, and 
quaffed confusion to his enemies. Thus was the 
title to New Netherland properly confirmed ! Eel- 
kins, however, was caught and expelled from the 
country in disgrace. 



DIRECTOR-GENERAL VAN TWILLER 53 

On the Connecticut River, van Twiller had a 
still more serious problem to face. By right of 
Captain Block's exploration, the Dutch claimed 
the land west of this Fresh Kiver as part of New 
Netherland. In 1632, large tracts of land on both 
sides of the river were bought from the Indians, 
a fort was built where Hartford now stands, and 
a flourishing trade began. Charmed by the sweet 
birdsong, which so reminded them of home, the 
Dutchmen named the place at the mouth of the 
stream after the lapwing, or phcebe bird, Kievit's 
Hoek, or Lapwing's Point ; but the fort, in expec- 
tation of profits, they named the House of Good 
Hope. 

Carrying out his orders, van Twiller sent as a 
commandant of the new fort his playmate from 
boyhood. Jacobus van Curler, then only twenty- 
three years old, born at Nijkerk, June 11, 1610. 
A capable artilleryman, Hans Janse Eencluys, of 
whom we shall hear again in Schenectady, had 
charge of the two little cannon mounted on plat- 
forms. Unless a shot, by an extremely lucky hit, 
should strike a fast passing boat low down amid- 
ships, there was little risk to a blockade runner 
in taking his chances while moving up the river. 

All this did Holmes and the Plymouth men 
know well, when, in September, 1633, to occupy 
Windsor, they sailed safely past van Curler, who 
had peremptory and peaceful orders. The alliance 
must not be violated. With the European situa- 



54 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tion as it was, little could result from the Di- 
rector's actions, except some funny moves in the 
game of bluff. The English, who cared very- 
little either for King Charles Stuart, then on his 
shaky throne, or for Their High Mightinesses 
at the Hague, were pouring into Connecticut by 
hundreds, and were determined to occupy the 
land. A great migration from Massachusetts set 
in, and soon Windsor and Hartford had a popu- 
lation of nearly a thousand persons. Literally, 
they swamped out the Dutchmen. Even when van 
Twiller sent a company of seventy soldiers to 
make a military demonstration, as if to drive out 
the English from their fortified blockhouse at 
Windsor, no one besides the trumpeter could 
or did do anything, for orders were peremptory 
against bloodshed ; so, after seeing the place and 
its cannon, all marched back to Manhattan. The 
time for a war between the two nations had not 
come. 

Nevertheless, the Dutch nobly sustained their 
part in keeping order. When Captain Stone, the 
Virginian, was murdered by some Pequot Indians, 
van Curler had the murderers seized and hanged, 
and then made friendly overtures to the Boston 
people. 

Van Twiller, in spite of his requests, received 
no permission from home to fight the English, 
however they might insult, dare, or trespass ; but 
when he heard of Indian disorders, he took vigor- 



DIRECTOR-GENERAL VAN TWILLER 55 

ous action. His chivalry could never be called in 
question. In November, 1635, young John Win- 
throp landed with a party at Kievit's Hoek, tore 
down the arms of the States-General, and calling 
the place Saybrook after his patrons, had a fort 
built by Lyon Gardner. The House of Good Hope 
up the river was thus virtually blockaded. Never- 
theless, when in 1637 Wethersfield was attacked 
and nine men were killed and two English girls 
taken captive, van Twiller at once despatched a 
sloop from Manhattan with orders to rescue the 
maids at any cost. At the Thames River, a half- 
dozen Pequots, invited on board, were offered ran- 
som for the captives. This being refused by the 
braves, the skipper held them as hostages until 
the girls were returned and later safely delivered 
to their friends. 

The golden age of the Dutch West India Com- 
pany and the reign of van Twiller, from 1633 to 
1637, covered the same years. A luxuriant crop of 
windmills of the approved pattern sprang up on 
favorable elevations on Manhattan, and many other 
signs of prosperity were visible. Besides the Gov- 
ernor's mansion erected within the fort, barracks 
for the troops and the second church edifice rose 
to view. It was six-sided, or hexagonal, in shape, 
with a roof running up to a point and surmounted 
by a belfry, on which was the cock of St. Nicholas, 
— the symbol of vigilance and the resurrection. 
There were several churches of this model in the 



56 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

colonies of Java and the West Indies. In 1656, 
one was built at the Hague, and a fine one in Rot- 
terdam was erected according to this fashion as 
late as 1847. 

It is generally believed that van TwiUer looked 
after his own interests more than those of " John 
Company," and that he was a debauched and dis- 
honest man; yet, as simple fact, very little was 
actually proved against him. He lived the strenu- 
ous life, and so was often misunderstood. He was 
given to excess of conviviality, but with all his faults 
he had unbounded energy. He was certainly an 
enthusiastic agriculturist, and did much to develop 
dairying, fruit culture, and farming. Besides re- 
pairing the fort, erecting new windmills, obtaining 
large grants from the Indians, and developing the 
trade with the Indians and commerce with the 
West Indies, he was active in many other good 
things, about which his burlesquers and detractors 
are silent. He was such a friend to the Indians 
that later, during his successor's wicked war, the 
red men called loudly for van Twiller as their just 
benefactor. In the delicate matter of the boundary 
line between Connecticut and New Netherland, he 
was diplomatic and courteous. He firmly insisted 
on an appeal to the transatlantic sovereigns in 
Europe, and argued that local governors in America 
should not settle such important questions. Under 
him, the new church was erected. His knowledge 
of land and cattle served him well, and he became 



DIRECTOR-GENERAL VAN TWILLER 57 

the largest private farm owner, after tlie Pa- 
troons, in tlie colony. With full faith in its future, 
he bought about fifteen thousand acres including 
several small islands, and part of Long Island. Nut- 
ten, one of these islands, famous for its nut trees, 
and a favorite place for the Dutch boys of Manhat- 
tan to visit by swimming or rowing, is still called, 
because of his purchase, Governor's Island. He 
gave to Gravesend, one of the English villages 
on Long Island, an astonishingly liberal charter, 
which contrasts strongly with Stuy vesant's bigotry. 

It may be that van Twiller abused his official 
position, laying his fingers on choice bits of ter- 
ritory, and that striking hands with some mem- 
bers of his council, he gained his ends. Perhaps 
he favored the Patroon's colony at Rensselaerwijk 
too much. It is certain that while the Company's 
farms hardly paid expenses of their keep, van Twil- 
ler and some of his friends were getting rich and 
had fine pastures and gardens. He came into col- 
lision with men of good sense, and at last had ar- 
rayed against him all the forces of decency and 
restraint, military, popular, and ecclesiastical. 

Being a son of thunder, rather than of con- 
solation, Domine Bogardus, disapproving of van 
Twiller's folly, rebuked him for peculation; or, 
as we now call it, "graft." He even called him 
a *' devil's child," and threatened to expose him 
more fully from the pulpit. To reinforce the Dom- 
ine, the schout, van Dincklagen, after remon- 



58 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

strating vainly with the Director-General, crossed 
the ocean to denounce him to the States-General. 
Under pressure of the National Congress, the 
Company investigated the numerous complaints, 
and van Twiller was dismissed from office. He 
took his humiliation very lightly, however. With 
his houses and lands, live stock and tobacco plan- 
tations, he continued to amass riches. He was 
known as one of the wealthiest landowners in the 
colony. 

When his indulgent uncle, Kilian van Eensse- 
laer, the Patroon, died in 1646, van Twiller, being 
named as executor of his estate, returned finally to 
Nijkerk to care for the property and bring up the 
son and heir, Johannes, who was still under age, 
and his son Nicholas, born in 1636, of whom we 
shall hear again. Van Twiller also kept up con- 
troversies with the corporation, by which he was 
described as " an ungrateful man who had sucked 
his wealth from the breasts of the Company which 
he now abuses." 

Van Twiller set an example to his successor 
Kieft. Though never followed by Stuyvesant, 
this " slow " or " smart " Dutchman, who was as 
" brainy " as most of the men who win fame on 
Wall Street, gave quick precedents to the later 
English governors, almost every one of whom was 
a land speculator to a disgraceful and often dis- 
honest extent. For not making war on the Eng- 
lish trespassers, however, van Twiller was no more 



DIRECTOR-GENERAL VAN TWILLER 59 

to blame than was a certain captain of the United 
States navy in 1846, who, though in command of 
a seventy-four-gun ship of the line and a frigate, 
even when pushed rudely by an Asiatic sailor, 
obeyed his orders, and refrained not only from 
blood reprisal, but from retaliation of any sort. 
In due time, when, her freedom fully won from 
Spain, Holland in the war caused by the British 
Navigation Act — the same which brought on our 
own Kevolutionary War — was goaded to fight 
her insolent foe on the sea, the record of the two 
Tromps and of de Ruyter showed what Dutchmen 
could do when honor demanded. 

Negro slavery was introduced into New Nether- 
land by the West India Company against the wish 
of the people. Eleven black men and some black 
women formed the first consignment in 1626, and 
more came in 1629. This proceeding was not in 
accordance with law. Yet it tallied with the spirit 
of the age. The Dutch common people were op- 
posed to slavery, but the Company forced it upon 
them. In 1646, at the request of Domine Mega- 
polensis and the congregations on Manhattan, the 
elderly slaves were given their freedom, but only 
on the hard conditions of furnishing to the Com- 
pany one fat hog and twenty-two bushels of grain 
annually during the lifetime of each manumitted 
person, while their children remained in servitude. 
Slavery in New Netherland was very mild in form, 
and not until after the English conquest was there 



60 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

severity, with the consequent alleged negro plots 
and race wars. The black slave, like " the strictly 
brought up child who knows nothing of strict- 
ness," scarcely felt his bonds. Besides being al- 
most wholly a house servant, given a patch of land 
to cultivate for himself, and always allowed to 
buy his freedom, he took Pinxter Day as his own 
for a carnival of fun. No surer proof of the general 
kindness of the Dutch to their black servants can 
be imagined than that fixed in Article LIX, in 
the legislation of the Reformed Dutch Church in 
regard to baptism and membership and the free 
privileges of the Church : " In the Church there 
is no difference between bond and free, but all are 
one in Christ." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 

We have seen that Dutch colonists for New 
Netherland were difficult to secure, and that arti- 
ficial stimulus to emigration was needed. From 
England good men were driven out by spiritual 
tyranny, but in Holland conscience was free and 
the country well off. The ordinary lures — gold, 
fish, furs, freedom to worship God — which led 
Spaniards, Frenchmen, some Dutchmen, and many 
Englishmen beyond sea, did not suffice for the men 
of the Republic. So " John Company " hit upon a 
new device, which was nothing less than a rever- 
sion to feudalism. 

In the Netherlands, the three classes of society 
were nobles, burghers or citizens, and the common 
people. The nobles, who lived mostly in the coun- 
try, were landowners, and often patroons, that 
is, patrons, or manor lords of vast estates ; but the 
burghers, who governed the cities, formed the aris- 
tocracy, and had great powers. The consuming am- 
bition of the merchants, who were gaining wealth 
rapidly, was to own land, and thus be like the 
nobles. This desire could not well be gratified in a 
small country like Holland. Here the earth had to 
be rescued by pump, spade, and dyke from under 



62 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

the jealous waters, and held only through sleepless 
vigilance. In America land was plentiful and 
cheap. It was this coveted prize that was a lure. 
By securing and owning great manors in New 
Netherland, plain burghers might become landed 
proprietors and rank as nobles. 

So, with the threefold idea of enlarging their 
fortunes, becoming patroons, and developing New 
Netherland, the directors of the Dutch West India 
Company, in 1630, enlarged their plans. Reserv- 
ing Manhattan to the corporation, they issued the 
charter of " Privileges and Exemptions." This al- 
lowed a private person to take up stretches of land 
sixteen miles long facing a navigable river, or 
eight miles on either side of one, and extending 
as far back into the country as might be. Such a 
promoter, if he planted a colony of at least fifty 
adults, within four years, was a patroon on a 
manor, and had feudal rights over colonists. Dur- 
ing their decade of bonded service, the tenants 
could not leave their master, and if they did so, 
they were to be treated as runaways, and could 
be arrested. The Patroons, though free to trade, 
must pay at Manhattan five per cent duty on 
their cargoes. 

Here was a selfish scheme for the enrichment of 
a few monopolists. It was utterly opposed to the 
spirit of freedom-loving Holland. The Company's 
methods were already bad enough, as the immi- 
grants, on Manhattan, for example, could not own 



THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 63 

land in fee simple, but were tenants at will. This 
new scheme simply added another and a rival sov- 
ereignty. It was bound to be the source of un- 
numbered troubles, causing frequent conflicts of 
jurisdiction between the agents of the Company 
and the Patroons, besides anger and irritation 
among tenants, who were subjected to " the double 
pressure of feudal exaction and mercantile mo- 
nopoly." The system, which was a step backwards, 
was hated from the first by all self-respecting free 
settlers. Colonists who settled under patroon and 
manor were free of all taxes for ten years. They 
were not freemen, but semi-serfs. The patroon 
system was one of many Old World ideas that 
would not work in America. 

In favor of this semi-feudalism, probably sug- 
gested by French methods in Canada, it may be 
said, however, that in all cases above the value of 
fifty guilders, the tenants on the manors had the 
right of appeal. Independent farmers, as well as 
patroons and manor- tenants after discharging their 
obligations, were encouraged to seek homesteads. 
Other benefits in the charter of Exemptions were 
in favor of the Indians, and of religion and morals, 
so that, despite objectionable features in the new 
plan of colonization, there was hope of a large emi- 
gration from Patria. 

As matter of fact, however, only one of the 
manors, that of van Rensselaer, ever became a 
success. This result was due as much to the high 



64 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

character of the people settling it as to that of 
the van Rensselaers, high as this was. 

The men who devised this feudal scheme were 
among the first to take advantage of it. So far 
forward were Messrs. Godyn and Blommaert, that 
even before the adoption of the charter in Hol- 
land they had bought, through their agent, a 
manor, that is, a Riddergoed^ or knight's estate, 
on Delaware Bay. The Indians, by agreement 
made with pen and ink, were paid for a tract of 
land thirty-two miles long from Cape Henlopen 
to the mouth of the river. This was the first Eu- 
ropean land title written within the State of Del- 
aware. 

Kilian van Rensselaer bought from the Indians, 
first through Captain Krol and later through Gil- 
lis Housett, the land which is now the larger part 
of the counties of Albany and Rensselaer in New 
York, making an estate of about a thousand 
square miles. Hendrik and Alexander van der 
Capellen, two brothers, and one an ancestor 
of our nation's friend during the War for Inde- 
pendence, bought Staten Island and land of the 
Navesink and Raritan Indians. Michael Pauw 
(in Latin Pavonius, or peacock) secured Staten 
Island, Hoboken, and what is now Jersey City, 
calling his domain Pavonia. 

Thus was the land seized, not as in Europe, by 
the might and sword of the border brawler, but 
by the craft of the pen held by the man in the 



THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 65 

counting-house. Already in New France or Can- 
ada, the French had set the Dutch the bad ex- 
ample of feudalism ; but, at its worst, the Dutch 
system was much milder in its features than either 
the British or the Gallic model. 

Yet notwithstanding the advantages offered to 
poor folks, the whole system of patroons and 
manors was detestable to a free Dutchman. As 
matter of fact and history, no Dutch village com- 
munity was ever founded under the charter of 
1629. Not until the States-General broke the 
Company's monopoly and proclaimed more liberal 
terms of land settlement in the charter of 1640, 
did the free villages of Esopus, Schenectady, and 
those on Long Island spring up. In the end, it was 
to issue that, whether in French Canada, Dutch 
New Netherland, English New York or Virginia, 
or in the Southern Confederacy, where belated 
feudalism attempted, even by going to war, to 
root itself, this Old World system of land tenure 
and reciprocal service was unsuitable and impos- 
sible in America. 

Feudalism never promotes peace, and without 
military force is an absurdity. The new system, 
even on paper, nearly rent the Company in twain. 
In Amsterdam there were jealousy and crimina- 
tions, and certain directors of the Company were 
charged with abusing their position in order to 
secure land. After a storm of criticism, the Pa- 
troons divided the spoil with others, to whom they 



66 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

granted shares in their estates, though keeping 
control of the stock. Nevertheless, the tendency 
of the Patroons was ever to exceed rather than to 
limit their powers. They even went so far as to 
invade the Company's darling monopoly of the fur 
trade, by sending agents and setting up trading- 
stations in new regions. This brought on another 
storm of bitter complaints. On the Bourse and in 
the Chambers jealousies were rife. Some one must 
be made a scapegoat. 

In New Netherland Minuit, as a good servant 
of the corporation which employed him, continued 
to do his best. He was popular, progressive, and 
unceasingly active. Yet, since he had, by obeying 
and carrying out his orders, seemed to aid and 
abet the great dividers of the land, he was selected 
as victim and recalled. In reality, it was deemed 
no longer necessary to conciliate the Walloons, 
for many of them had returned to Holland, and 
native Dutchmen were now to come over in large 
numbers ; and, besides, van Rensselaer had a 
nephew he wanted to advance. Minuit went back 
on the ship Unity (Eendracht) with some home- 
sick colonists, including some of Jesse de Forest's 
children. Arriving March, 1632, at Plymouth, 
England, his ship was attached on the charge of 
the Dutch trading illegally on English territory. 
In May she was quietly released, and soon reached 
Holland. 

At home Minuit found himself blamed because 



THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 67 

so mucli of the Company's land had got into the 
hands of the Patroons. Evidently he was the victim 
of pique, and he did not regain office. To the end 
of his days he felt aggrieved at the soulless corpo- 
ration. Meanwhile something not on land, but in 
the water, was drawing Dutchmen to New Nether- 
land. 

The beaver, the codfish, gold, spices, and the 
path to China were all magnets to attract practi- 
cal white men away from their northern European 
homes to America, but it was the whale that lured 
the Dutch to settle on the Delaware River. While 
the Spaniards followed the dreams of their own 
imagination, seeking the gilded man and the foun- 
tain of youth, the northern Europeans came for 
things marketable. 

From the eleventh century, the Basques had 
hunted the whale in the high latitudes of Europe, 
and in 1372, as alleged, ventured even into Ameri- 
can waters. When Henry Hudson found the bow- 
head whales off Spitzbergen, Dutchmen became 
wild over the idea of making fortunes from blubber. 
To " strike oil " in the sea was their one idea. In 
1611 the Greenland and Northern Whaling Com- 
pany was formed in Holland. Smeerenburg or 
" Grease Town " was for many years a famous 
Dutch settlement in Spitzbergen. Before the cen- 
tury closed, nearly three hundred Dutch ships, 
manned by fifteen thousand sailors, caught a thou- 
sand whales annually. 



68 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

While excitement and promise were still new, 
David Pietersen de Vries of Hoorn, wlio had sailed 
around the world and was familiar with the East 
Indies, joined in the sport. He had heard of whales 
on the Atlantic coast and in the South River of 
New Netherland. Van der Donck later told of two 
whales that in 1646 swam up the North River, and 
one grounding on Whale Island, near the great 
Falls at Cohoes, brought a supply of oil to the colo- 
nists' doors, besides causing the Mohawk River to 
swim with grease for three weeks. Still later Man- 
hattan had her whale hunters, and Poughkeepsie 
became the headquarters of a whaling-fleet. 

De Vries is one of the Dutch authors who wrote 
about New Netherland, and has left us a good 
book, in which is a true portrait of himself at the 
age of sixty, with his coat of arms. Stars, crescent, 
clover leaf, and fruit are on his shield. The crest 
of his open-barred helmet is a silver sphere, or the 
world enwrapped with bands suggestive of voyages 
and man's conquest over nature. The motto is well 
translated : — 

The while, around the globe's four quarters I did steer, 
I on the open helmet bore a silver sphere. 

The first colony of thirty settlers, with cattle and 
stores, who were to re-colonize the South River 
region, once temporarily occupied by May's colony 
in 1623, was sent out by the five co-Patroons, in 
December, 1630, in the big ship Walvisch, or 



THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 69 

Whale. A yacht of eighteen guns accompanied 
them. The smart Dunkirkers, ever on the alert, 
seeing the two ships separated, dashed out from 
behind their sandbanks and captured the smaller 
vessel, and the big ship went on alone. By way of 
the West Indies, the Whale entered Delaware Bay 
in April, 1631, and Peter Heyes, the commander, 
landed his people a few miles above Cape Hen- 
lopen. He built a brick house with palisades, and 
called the place Swaanendael, or Swan Valley. 
Probably from this reason the Indians called the 
Dutch " Swannekens." Gillis Housett, of whom we 
heard in the north, was commandant. On the other 
side of the river or Godyn Bay, Heyes bought 
from the Indian chiefs a tract of land twelve miles 
square. 

It is not at all probable that the Indians ever 
understood a contract of this sort, as did the white 
purchasers, or knew that in receiving a few axes, 
shovels, beads, pans, pots, and some cloth, they 
were losing all claim to the land. Their ideas of 
property were of the Stone Age. They thought only 
of joint occupation, with the right to plant, fish, and 
hunt. Nor had these Algonquins the same unity 
of organization which might give the sale of land, 
as in a case by the Iroquois, the security of a mod- 
ern business transaction. The forest men, as distinct 
from the tide-water Indians, transferred their land 
with the solemn accompaniment of wampum as 
record. These same lands, in three states, in the 



70 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Delaware Yalley, were bought and sold over and 
over again by Dutch, Swedes, and English. It is 
probably true that, in 1682, the noble Christian 
teachinos of the Lutheran Swedes and their ex- 
emplary lives among the savages, during forty years 
or more, had predisposed them to trust and welcome 
kindly the founder of Pennsylvania. Yet it may be 
that the most potent reason why the Lenni-Lenape 
held to Penn's treaty was that they were threatened 
by the Iroquois with extermination if they violated 
it. 

The redskins and the Dutchmen quickly mis- 
understood one another. Flags and tokens of sov- 
ereignty were not seen in the same light by savages 
as by Europeans. According to civilized customs, 
a pole was erected on the purchased land, and a 
piece of tin, with the arms of the Netherlands 
painted on it, was nailed to the pole. One day, in 
innocence and without a twinge of conscience, a 
chieftain, wanting the shining metal to ornament 
his tobacco pipes, walked off with it. Housett at 
once took this as direct insult or treachery. He 
made such a noise about it that some of the tribe 
killed the offender and brought one part of his 
body as a token. Then the horrified Dutchman 
upbraided the savages for going too far. He had 
meant only to scold and scorn. 

But the mischief was done, and blood revenge 
was the savage law. Secretly armed, the kinsmen 
of the murdered man came into the settlement. 



THE PATROONS AND THE MANORS 71 

All were working in the fields except the com- 
mandant and a sick man who was guarded by a 
chained mastiff. Of this animal the Indians were 
more afraid than of an armed man. If at this time 
they had dogs, they certainly were not of the breeds 
of Europe, or their equals in courage or size. Hous- 
ett, when off his guard, was tomahawked and fell 
dead at once, but the faithful dog died game, filled 
like a pincushion with shafts, before he gave up. 
It took twenty-five arrows to finish him. This 
plucky hound was brought from the land in which 
one of its own species saved the life of the Father 
of the Fatherland. Both on the statue in the Hague 
and on the tomb in Delft one sees a little dog 
represented at the feet of William the Silent. 

One by one the men and women in the fields 
were shot, the horses and cattle killed, and houses 
and palisades set on fire. The next day the sun 
rose on blackened ruins and scattered corpses. 
This was the sight seen on December 6, 1632. 
Tragic as it was in its end, this settlement was 
"the cradling of a state." 

After five months' delay, de Vries had sailed in 
the new ship New Netherland, built on Manhat- 
tan, by Minuit, of Mohawk Kiver timber. Exult- 
ing in hopes of whale oil and crops, he arrived off 
Swaanendael only to find desolation and death. 
He heard the story from a native, but instead of 
taking revenge and thus probably making the 
innocent suffer, he opened trade and rebuilt the 



72 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

settlement. He named the pretty creek, or kill, 
Hoorn Kill, for his native town ; but long after- 
wards Englishmen changed the word in form and 
spelling, thus giving the stream an offensive name, 
besides inventing a bad story to fit the vile and 
false word that long disfigured our maps. 

The prospect of making a fortune from whales 
proved a delusion, and de Vries later abandoned 
Swaanendael. For nearly twenty years, except in 
an occasional trading ship, the Dutch were absent 
from the Delaware River. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE RENSSELAERWIJK COLONY 

Van Rensselaer's colony was planted on 
ground that was sacred and classic in Iroquois tra- 
dition. Here was the Eastern Door of the Long 
House. Naturally one expects to find the gateway 
into the Iroquois country where two valleys and 
streams join, at the confluence of the Mohawk 
with the Hudson. Eastbound travelers in moc- 
casin and canoe, however, made detour at Sche- 
nectady. By turning to the right into the valley of 
Norman's Kill, and following the stream south- 
wardly, they avoided the shallow windings of the 
lower Mohawk, the sandhills of Niskayuna, and 
the great falls at Cohoes. This trail from Niagara 
and the Far West formed the great Indian high- 
way of America. 

At Tawasentha on the Hudson was one of the 
most sacred places in Iroquois tradition. Besides 
being " the place of many dead," it was the home 
of Hiawatha, the great culture-hero, and the re- 
puted founder of the league of the Five Nations. 
Here, with burial of the tomahawk and smoking 
of the calumet, councils were held and treaties 
compacted between various tribes. Here they first 
met the white man, exchanging furs for fire-water 



74 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

and the firearms with which they humbled their 
vassals. 

On their westward route, they avoided the hills, 
sands, and cataracts northward, and through the 
valley of Norman's Kill rejoined the Mohawk 
trail. The " kill " took its name from Andries 
Bradt, who was a Norman, Northman, or Norse- 
man, that is, a Dane, or of Danish extraction, who 
settled on its banks in 1630. This pretty stream, 
with its flower-lined cliffs and alluring rock cran- 
nies, meandering through daisy-clothed meadows, 
recalls in its name the home of the Vikings. 

The first covenant of friendship between the 
Iroquois and the Hollanders was here entered into 
by Jacob Eelkins in 1617. Adrian Joris, a wise 
and energetic superintendent, confirmed the com- 
pact in 1623. 

Daniel van Kriekenbeek, the successor of Joris, 
was less wary and more susceptible to Indian elo- 
quence. Opposite, on the east side of the river, at 
Green Bush, rose the palisaded castle of the Mohi- 
cans. In 1626 they asked the Dutch commandant 
to aid them in a raid against the Mohawks. Kriek- 
enbeek foolishly consented, and set out with six 
of his men towards Schenectady, but the West- 
ern red men were alert, and the whole party was 
driven back by a volley of arrows. Among the 
many slain were four Dutchmen, including the 
commandant. Then the white people learned to 
their horror that the Iroquois were, on some occa- 



THE RENSSELAERWIJK COLONY 75 

sions at least, cannibals. They first roasted and ate 
one Hollander, probably an unusually brave fighter. 
Then the victors took back a leg and an arm to 
hang up in their council house to show that Euro- 
peans were not invincible. Other similar instances 
proved that cannibalism, though not usual, was 
neither excessively rare nor practiced in mere bra- 
vado. Hunger was sufficient to fill the kettle with 
human flesh, when other food was not at hand or 
was difficult to procure. 

When Peter Barentsen, the new commandant 
for Fort Orange, arrived on the scene from Man- 
hattan, the Iroquois hastened to explain the recent 
unpleasant affair. They justified themselves, and 
declared that they had no enmity with the Dutch. 
Barentsen accepted the explanation. Packs of furs 
were brought in, and peaceful traffic was resumed. 

Barentsen was relieved by Captain Sebastian 
Krol, or Crol (pronounced CruU), a church elder, 
a comforter of the sick, and one of the shininsf 
characters of New Netherland. To him is ascribed 
the cruller, or Krol-yer, a toothsome delicacy of 
high repute. The word is unknown in Holland, and 
the makers of dictionaries have vainly endeavored 
to derive the word from the Dutch, or German 
hrullen^ to curl. When provisions were short, or 
the bill of fare at Fort Orange was monotonous, 
Captain Krol supplied a new sort of olekoek^ that 
is, "fried cake," "doughnut," or compound of 
flour, eggs, butter, and sugar. Krol, with his 



76 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

" crullers," added a new delicacy to the frontier 
table. 

Krol was a church officer, and occasionally went 
down the river to Manhattan to sit in the Con- 
sistory Meeting of the First Reformed Church 
in North America. With Domine Michaelius he 
grieved at the loose morals of a new community, 
and at " the speech of Ashdod " heard from the 
half-breeds. However, unlike that other colonial 
governor, Nehemiah, Krol did not smite or pluck 
off the hair of the fathers. Rather, like Malachi, 
he palliated the situation, for many of the Dutch 
pioneers had left home before being married. 
" Let none deal treacherously against the wife of 
his youth" — even if she were a squaw — was 
good advice. 

The lonely Dutch bachelors were soon to have 
brides from home. In 1630 Krol was delighted to 
receive an order from Kilian van Rensselaer to 
purchase for him, from the Iroquois proprietors, 
a great estate. The commissary, the overseer of 
farms, and a company of farmers furnished with 
tools, implements, and cattle would shortly ar- 
rive. A church and school, with a domine and 
master, were also promised to complete the new 
manor. 

The Patroon of Nijkerk fitted up a comfortable 
ship, named the Eendracht, or Unity, from the 
motto of the Republic, Eendracht maaght macJit^ 
which means "Unity makes strength," and put her 



THE RENSSELAERWIJK COLONY 77 

under the charge of Captain John Brouwer. The 
colonists could not feel safe until they were well 
out on the ocean, because of the Dunkirkers, or 
Belgian-Spanish pirates. The admiralty, or naval 
station at Dunkirk, for privateers and war ves- 
sels flying the Spanish flag, had been organized by 
the Duke of Parma in 1583. In four years these 
pirates had become so dangerous that the States- 
General ordered that when captured no mercy be 
shown to either masters or men. In many a Dutch 
port the gallows stood ready, and the hangman be- 
gan his work at once. Dutch vessels could go out 
only in convoy or heavily armed. Even then, the 
Dunkirkers could sometimes by numbers overcome 
four or five state ships, even men-of-war, saving 
themselves and their booty behind the danger- 
ous Flemish sandbanks. Many a ship bound for 
America was thus caught and plundered, and its 
passengers were held to ransom. For sixty years 
this war on the waters between the Dutch sailors 
and the Dunkirkers continued. It was to root the 
pirates out of their lairs that the States-General 
sent Maurice, their young commander-in-chief, 
into the enemy's country. Though the supreme 
object was not then attained, the decisive victory 
of Newport was gained in June, 1600, and inci- 
dentally fresh honor came to the van Kensselaers 
from this campaign, as we shall now see. 

Descendants of the Crusaders, this family bore 
on the shield of their arms a cross of the Knights 



78 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

of St. John, silver on a red ground, with the motto, 
Niemand Zonder, or " No man without " (a cross). 
Now, at their city home in Amsterdam, they were 
to receive a special honor from Prince Maurice. 
Heer van Kensselaer was one of the cavalcade of 
mounted gentlemen who constituted the prince's 
escort of honor when, after his victory, he entered 
that city in triumphant array. He hung cressets, 
or iron (^baskets of fire, around the walls and on 
the roof of his mansion, and the effect was so strik- 
ing that Maurice, summoning the householder, 
congratulated him on his artistic triumph, and told 
him to take as his family motto Omnibus effulgeo, 
"I outshine all." The flaming torch in an iron 
basket henceforth became part of the wapen, or 
arms, of the head of the van Rensselaer house. 

The passenger list of the ship Unity was made 
up of mechanics, farmers, and capable men with 
families, people who had grown up together from 
childhood. The women were especially well fitted 
to be the ancestresses of families that should at- 
tain renown. In Holland girls were as well edu- 
cated in the public schools as were boys. After a 
maidenhood spent in mastery of household science 
and art, they became real partners with their hus- 
bands in their business or enterprises. We shall 
hear further about several of these typical Dutch 
women, whose Bibles, silver-clasped and held in 
hand or at belt, chatelaines holding keys, tablets, 
needle-cases, etc., cake -moulds, dresses, linen 



REDRES 

Van de 

Mn^fm mUjfmltm m Be 




t'A M S T E R D A M. 



<^tt)^mhthp Thunis lacobfz, iBootienDem DelBotoe- 
ftraetymDe l^iOojieUan 3[ofcptiu]0f/ Anno 1643 . 

TITLE PAGE SHOWING SHIP BEARING DUTCH COLONISTS 



THE RENSSELAERWIJK COLONY 79 

chests, and what-not, are still in the possession of 
their descendants. There was Maryje (that is, lit- 
tle Mary or Maria) Jonas, who was the midwife, or 
"trained nurse," of the period. With her came 
two young and handsome daughters who quickly 
learned the language of the Indians, and were 
always friends of the red men. It was her daugh- 
ter Annetje, better known as " Anneke " Janse, 
with whom the young fellow Roelof Janse, in the 
employ of the Patroon, fell desperately in love. 
They were married, and four children were born 
to them, and these became more famous than even 
their ambitious mother, perhaps, dreamed they 
would be. 

Of Annetje, or little Ann, tradition says that 
she was lively, energetic, smart, frugal, with rosy 
cheeks and snapping black eyes, and that she 
kept her good looks until she died of a good old 
age. By her thrift and wifely help, her husband 
was able in a few years to leave the service of the 
Patroon, and bidding good-by to feudalism, to 
live on Manhattan. He bought a farm of sixty 
acres overlooking the Hudson Elver, but died soon 
after his arrival, leaving a buxom and pretty 
widow. "Anneke Janse" married Domine Bogar- 
dus, to her social advantage, and is the ances- 
tress of many thousands of people. Her sister 
Maryje excelled even Anneke, for she married 
three times, and had a child by each husband, 
thus having much to do with the founding of 



80 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

three families. These were typical women of 
New Netherland. 

Why Kilian van Rensselaer's proved to be the 
best colony will be seen when we glance at the 
old home of his agents and colonists in Guelder- 
land. " Like fathers like sons." Nor is it any ac- 
cident that near Fort Orange and Rensselaerwijk 
are Guilderland and Guilderland Center, of sweet 
personal or ancestral memory to thousands of 
Americans. To see these people at home is to 
know them as they were, for better or worse, and 
to understand what they would bring with them. 
We shall later cross the ocean, view the monu- 
ments, read the documents, and survey the scene. 



CHAPTER IX 

KIEFT AND HIS INDIAN WAR 

Who can divine what wisdom brooded over the 
College of the Nineteen Directors of the Com- 
pany, when they chose Van Twiller's successor, 
William Kieft ? Though with more abilities and 
experience, while possibly less foolish, Kieft was 
scarcely fitted to be either a statesman or a first- 
class business man. Very probably it was in the 
reaction against too much patroonism that such a 
man was appointed. It is probable, also, that in 
political influence with the States-General, rather 
than in special favor with the Company, lay the 
secret of Kieft's selection. Wishing to avoid war 
with England until the Spaniards were overcome, 
especially since the fortunes of the West India 
Company were declining, the Dutch National 
Cono^ress made direct choice of this man who 
promised great reforms. It is certain that dark 
stories were told of his previous misbehavior in 
France and Turkey, before reaching America, 
and that from the first he as surely boasted of his 
power as it seems he intended to misuse it. 

Kieft took the oath of office, which he was to 
break in manifold ways, and sailed on the ship 
Herrinsf. To avoid the terrible Hatteras and 



82 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Jersey coast storms, he spent the winter at the 
Bermudas, and arrived at Manhattan, March 28, 
1638. 

He took hold of things with the energy of an ab- 
solute ruler and with the effect of a new broom. 
He hoped to remedy all disorders and defects by 
proclamations. He erected and set in operation 
a brewery and made good beer, — then the daily 
drink of Europe ; for tea, coffee, cocoa, and hot 
drinks were not yet. The first in the United 
States territory, this brewery made profits. Yet 
Kieft would allow no taprooms open during di- 
vine service, or after one o'clock A. M. Then 
"tap-toe" (in our language, "tattoo" or "taps," 
and now a military signal for bedtime) sounded. 
He refused to have firearms sold to the Indians. 
He had the curfew rung at nine P. M. He planted 
orchards and gardens and opened two annual 
cattle fairs. He built a hotel at the corner of 
Pearl Street and Coenties Slip. He put the Com- 
pany's farms in such good condition that the bet- 
ter class of native Dutch colonists began to come 
over from Patria in larger numbers. 

Yet his first official act showed him to be a 
tyrant, and he never reformed. His method was 
farcical. His idea of duty was to do as he pleased. 
He wrote, " I am my own master, for I have my 
commission, not from the Company, but from the 
States-General." He appointed the Huguenot 
physician, Johannes la Montague, his sole coun- 



KIEFT AND HIS INDIAN WAR 83 

cilor, giving one vote to the doctor and having 
two votes for himself. The affairs of the province 
were administered by these two men, aided also 
by the secretary and the schout. 

Domine Bogardus was not afraid of Kieft. It 
was a good thing for the colony that he was not, 
and that there was a man of influence brave enough 
to oppose high-handed folly. No newspapers or 
ballot boxes being in operation to improve the 
government, the pulpit was almost the only place 
in whicb the best organ of public opinion could 
restrain the Director-General. 

Kieft, stimulated by Captain de Vries, did some- 
thing towards improving morals and religion, but 
bis self-conceit came near spoiling his good inten- 
tions. However, after a popular subscription, a 
new church edifice was reared, wherein Domine 
Bogardus held forth for five years longer. Yet the 
preacher would not truckle to the Director, or ap- 
prove his wicked doings. When Kieft began his 
wholly unjustifiable and bloody Indian war, Bo- 
gardus denounced him from the pulpit, taking the 
part of the people against their bad ruler, and de- 
manding an appeal for justice to Patria. This Kieft 
would not allow. He even made a counter charge 
against the Domine, of being too fond of wine 
and of taking part with the malcontents. Then, 
instead of attending divine worship, Kieft stayed 
away and ordered drums to be beaten and cannon 
to be fired, making things as uncomfortable for 



84 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

the worshipers as possible. Thus the teapot tem- 
pest was kept up. 

Under Kieft's administration, the southern part 
of New Netherland was nearly ruined in war with 
the Indians in the tide-water region. Several causes 
may be stated for this terrible but utterly needless 
calamity. In the first place, there was undying 
hatred between the Iroquois and the Algonquins, 
and it was not always easy for the Dutch to pre- 
vent getting mixed up in forest politics or to keep 
out of the red men's quarrels. Again, the divided 
territory and jurisdiction — of the Patroon at 
Rensselaerwijk and of the Director at Manhat- 
tan — made serious trouble because the Iroquois 
could freely buy guns and powder in the north, 
while these munitions of war were forbidden to 
the Algonquins in the south. The bloodshed which 
followed the quarrels arising through misunder- 
standings of language and customs, between white 
man and red, boded dire evil to all the colonists. 

When, for example, some pigs were stolen from 
Staten Island by some of "John Company's" ser- 
vants, the blame was laid on the Raritan Indians, 
who lived twenty miles inland. Thereupon Kieft 
sent a party of soldiers among them who killed 
several, plundered their houses, and destroyed 
their crops. The savages, unable to understand 
such treatment, were at once changed from friendly 
neighbors into sullen enemies, secretly sworn to re- 
venge. When clouds of danger were seen arising, 



KIEFT AND HIS INDIAN WAR 85 

Kieft began to repair the fort. This gave him a 
pretext for going further in his career of tyranny. 
In order to raise revenue for this extra expense, 
he laid a tax upon the River Indians. This was 
flying in the face of all Dutch precedent and prin- 
ciple in the Fatherland. " No taxation without con- 
sent " was a maxim as old as the abolition of feu- 
dalism. 

At this trick, the Indians were surprised and 
angry; but when the Raritans proceeded to dis- 
charge their debts of vengeance by descending on 
Staten Island and killing four colonists and lam- 
ing their grain and tobacco, Kieft set one tribe 
against the other. He offered the North River 
Indians a bounty of ten fathoms of wampum for 
every Raritan's head. This started intestine war 
among the savages, in which Pacham, a wily sa- 
chem at Haverstraw, led off. Among the striking 
autumn novelties at Manhattan was the sight of 
this chief marching down Broadway with a dead 
man's hand hanging to a stick. It had belonged to 
the Raritan chief. Presenting this token of bloody 
service to the Director, he claimed his reward. 

Twenty years before, under Van Twiller's ad- 
ministration, some rascally Dutchman, unknown 
to the authorities, had wantonly killed a savage, 
whose nephew, an Indian boy, who witnessed the 
murder, vowed to be revenged for the death of 
his kinsman. The young brave nourished his wrath 
for years, and when grown up, all white men being 



J 



86 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

alike to him, he entered the shop of Claes Smits, 
a wheelwright, and smote him dead with an axe. 
When Kieft demanded satisfaction of the sachem, 
he received a history of the case, but no more. He 
sent soldiers, but they failed to arrest the assassin. 

By this time Kief t's folly in taxing Indians and 
opening a market for heads and scalps had dis- 
gusted every one, but, like a true poltroon, he 
himself kept out of personal danger. Men openly 
twitted him with sleeping in the fort and sending 
others to risk their lives on his abominable errands. 
Portents of war were every day growing more 
threatening, yet the people had no share in the 
government, as in the Fatherland, while they had 
to suffer from the Director's folly. So, to save 
his own skin, Kieft called together the heads of 
families on Manhattan Island for deliberation 
and advice before going to war. These at once 
chose " Twelve Select Men," all Hollanders, and 
de Vries was made president. Their counsel was 
promptly given against war, while they stoutly 
called for reforms at home. Only after long argu- 
ment, and the Director's consenting to head the 
expedition in person, did hostilities begin, and 
then under limits and conditions imposed by the 
Twelve Men. 

The first expedition, under Ensign van Dyck, 
who is the ancestor of many notable and noble 
men still living, was a failure, but the Indians 
were alarmed and sued for peace. A treaty was 



KIEFT AND HIS INDIAN WAR 87 

made at the home of Jonas Bronk, from whose 
name Bronxville and the Borough of the Bronx 
take theirs. 

Peace was of short duration. The story of the 
war that broke out again is a long one, and has 
been often told. The Iroquois from the north at- 
tacked the Mohicans in the lower Hudson valley, 
driving them across the river like sheep before 
wolves. Those who survived Mohawk bullets and 
tomahawks were slaughtered by Dutch soldiers 
sent by Kieft at Pavonia and Corlaer's Hook. 
Then fifty Englishmen were enrolled and led by 
Captain John Underhill. In February, 1644, these 
attacked and burned an Indian town in Connecti- 
cut with frightful slaughter. The men who were op- 
posed to Kief t's policy, and who throughout pleaded 
for justice to the Indians, were de Vries and Ja- 
cobus van Curler. 

Kieft had failed to saddle the responsibility of 
war on the Twelve Men, and dissolved the As- 
sembly. For a time the people were denied the 
rights of the Fatherland and left as political exiles. 
They suffered that for which their fathers took up 
arms against the Spaniards, — " taxation without 
consent." Nothing could be more diametrically 
opposed to Dutch political genius and long-estab- 
lished custom in the Netherlands than Kieft's 
procedure. Taxation, only as voted by those who 
were to pay the taxes, was the established Dutch 
principle, to which Kieft was a traitor. Under 



88 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

pressure, tlie Governor again called a popular 
Assembly of the Eight Men, for consultation. 

When, in order to pay the English soldiers, 
Kieft proposed a new excise to be laid on liquors 
and beaver, the Eight Men opposed him, and de- 
manded that the Company attend to the defense 
of the colony. Taking a bold step, they petitioned 
the West India Company to recall Kieft. During 
five years there had hardly been as many months 
of peace. Their petition was heard, and Kieft was 
ordered home. 

Like the cow of the Dutch proverb that kicks 
over the bucket of milk she produces, Kieft spoiled 
the good results of his earlier energy and enterprise 
by dealing the colony a blow from which it did not 
recover until after 1664. Under him, during the 
Indian wars, the population of New Netherland 
was reduced over half. What he did of evil was 
wholly against the wish and will of the people. 
Between " John Company " and William Kieft, a 
foolish corporation and their foolish servant, the 
people of lower New Netherland were nearly 
crushed. 

As there were two distinct Indian domains, on 
the plateau and in the tide-water region, Iroquois 
and Algonquin, so in New Netherland there were 
two different Dutch policies in dealing with the 
natives, according as the white man's principles 
were incarnated in Arendt van Curler or William 
Kieft. In the north was an almost unbroken peace 



KIEFT AND HIS INDIAN WAR 89 

founded on mutual respect and justice. In the south 
were turmoil, bloodshed, waste, and devastation, 
the fruit of hatred and unrighteousness. 

The Company now selected a military man as 
Director-General, whose commission on its behalf 
was signed by the Jonkheer Alexander van der 
Capellen, ancestor of our friend Derek during the 
Revolution. In the Princess, one of the squadron 
of four ships, Stuyvesant, the man destined to live 
up to his name and stir up things, embarked for 
Manhattan. 

In August, 1647, the returning ship Princess, 
which bore both Domine Bogardus and Director 
Kieft, sailed for Patria, but was wrecked off the 
coast of Wales, and both notorieties were drowned. 
Happily, to cleanse the stain of his life, Kieft in 
his last words confessed that he had done wrong, 
and requested to be forgiven. Only twenty of the 
passengers or crew were saved. Kieft's two accus- 
ers, Melyn and Kuyter, were rescued, one of them, 
like Caesar, saving his manuscript, in his teeth as 
it were, for he at once set about recovering from 
the waves the box containing the papers of accu- 
sation, and he found them. In the States-General 
these representatives of New Netherland presented 
the case of the people so well that we shall find 
them, at the psychological moment, rising in behalf 
of the people in judgment against Peter Stuyve- 
sant, the implacable hater of popular free institu- 
tions. 



CHAPTER X 

NIJKEKK : THE OLD HOME BEYOND SEA 

To find the home of the successful planters of 
the northern and best part of New Netherland, we 
must look across the Zuyder Zee, in Guelderland. 
Here at Nijkerk, or near by, lived the van Rensse- 
laers, van Curlers, van Twillers, van Schlechten- 
horsts, and other families, who sent their young 
men and women as pioneers to our shores. From 
this ancient home came scores of the ancestors of 
the people of the Empire State. These hardy sons 
and daughters of the Dutch Republic were true 
Argonauts. They sailed away to cover the soil of 
the New Netherland with a golden fleece. 

The origin of Nijkerk, which means New Church, 
is not fully known, but its story we learn from 
Arend van Schlechtenhorst's " History of Gelder- 
land," from page 107 and onward. This author, 
who wrote his history in 1649, was a kinsman of 
Brandt van Schlechtenhorst, commissary atRensse- 
laerwijk, from 1647 to 1652, who acquired Katskill, 
Claverack, and the site of the future city of Troy 
for his patroon, in whose name, also, he withstood 
Stuyvesant, and by him was made prisoner. 

Perhaps Nijkerk got its name when the darkness 
of paganism had so far lifted that a Christian house 



NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME 91 

of worship was built here, A. D. 1222. It was given 
municipal rights in 1413, and fortified with gates 
and walls, of which there are now no trace. In the 
mediaeval wars it was several times besieged and 
plundered by border ruffians and militant bishops. 
After so many people left it for the New Nether- 
land, Nijkerk dwindled to a village, but in 1808 
was elevated to the rank of a city by King Louis 
Bonaparte. 

In the Middle Ages, forests covered not only 
Holland (wood-land), but most of the Netherlands. 
Then deer were plentiful, and the place called 
Kensselaer meant the deer's hiding-place, or the 
stag's lair. The estate, which lies about three miles 
south of Nijkerk, was given for service ill war and 
thus became a Rlddergoed^ that is, a manor, or 
knight's property. Its ownership conferred a title 
upon the head of the family, and also called for 
military service of the tenants in support of the 
lord, or patroon. Thus the name Van Rensselaer 
means " from the deer's lair." The family has died 
out in the Netherlands, and the ancient manor 
house now belongs to a farmer. The last of the 
name was buried at Nijkerk, April 11, 1819. The 
weathervanes on the gabled houses of the old 
estate long bore the crest of the van Rensselaers. 
In the struggle for independence from Spain not 
a few of the men gave their lives for their country. 
Other names in Nijkerk church and cemeteries 
are the same as those we read on the gravestones 



92 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

in Schenectady, Kingston, Yonkers, and Tarry- 
town. 

One might as well attempt to write the history 
of Japan and leave out Mikadoism as to essay the 
story of Netherland, either Old or New, and ig- 
nore the Reformed Church, for the Church was 
before the State, and the Reformation preceded 
the Republic. When the rule of universal spiritual 
government from one city in Italy was abolished, 
national churches sprang up. Instead of prayers 
in Latin, the new worship and praise were enjoyed 
in the people's own language. At the same time 
the customs in daily life and on Sunday were 
changed, and the Bible in the language of home 
became a household book. 

The Reformation came to Nijkerk in 1593. Be- 
fore that time, church and worship were in harmony 
with the spectacular features of feudalism, and 
were very impressive to the eye, ear, and to the 
senses generally. Incense, lights, vestments, and 
genuflections gave way to a much simpler ritual, 
consisting of prayer, psalm-singing, Bible-reading, 
and the sermon instead of the mass. The church 
interior was made almost bald in its plainness. 

Economic, educational, and political improve- 
ments gave the Netherlands modern statehood. 
Most striking was the new system of popular edu- 
cation. The public schools were separated from 
the Church, though much of the teaching was still 
doctrinal or religious. 




ORIEHECr, KlllAfviiRENSELAERDlTWERCnoi-NMAKEN- BYLAER 



THE VAN RENSSELAER TOMB IN NIJKERK CHURCH 



NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME 93 

Nijkerk was a typical Dutch town. What went 
on here was accomplished, sooner or later, in every 
community in the Republic. We thus learn what 
habits and ideas the emigrants brought to New 
Netherland, better than from any modern authors 
or after-dinner speeches. Instruction in the public 
schools sustained by taxation was free to all chil- 
dren, girls as well as boys, until the age of twelve. 
At Harderwijk, a few miles distant, Dutch, French, 
German, and Latin were taught at the High 
School, founded in 1375, and given a new edifice 
in 1614. At Nijkerk, the common branches, read- 
ing, writing, and arithmetic, the Ten Command- 
ments, the Creed, or the Twelve Articles of the 
Christian Faith, prayers, catechism, music, sing- 
ing, and manners were taught. Meals were eaten 
early. School began at six o'clock in summer and 
seven in winter, and the hours of instruction were 
from six to eight, nine to ten, twelve to two, and 
three to four; plenty of play alternating with 
work in school. On Wednesday and Saturday 
afternoons there was holiday from one o'clock. 

We shall hear further of the New Church folk 
in America, for hundreds of them came to settle 
on the enormously large van Rensselaer manor and 
in the Mohawk Valley and elsewhere. More than 
any other place in the old country, does Nijkerk de- 
serve to be called the mother town of New York 
State. More Americans of Dutch descent are de- 
scended from the Guelderland emigrants than 



94 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

from those hailing from any other community in 
Patria. Furthermore, the two men who embodied 
antagonistic ideas, the Old World notion of feu- 
dalism and the principle to which the New World 
is consecrated, — full personal freedom, — were 
natives of Nijkerk. They were Kilian van Rens- 
selaer and Arendt van Curler. 

Other folks from the New Church town, who 
became famous in the cradle days of the Empire 
State, will be spoken of hereafter, in the proper 
place. The van Twillers, the van Rensselaers, and 
the van Curlers intermarried during many genera- 
tions, and on the 9th of March, 1656, in the fine 
old church, already rich in organ and sculptured 
tombs, was placed a ''storied window richly dight," 
containing the names and the coats-of-arms of the 
three families. This custom, of presenting stained- 
glass windows containing the family arms, by pa- 
troons and prominent families, was a very ancient 
one, and was afterward continued in the American 
Dutch Reformed churches, " after the manner of 
Patria." 

The good people of Nijkerk were diligent, in- 
dustrious, and fond of the Church and the market. 
They hated laziness and dirt as the worst forms of 
original sin. They loved schools and genuine re- 
ligion, alternated work with play, and were ready 
for what the world might bring them. They turned 
to the right, as their statute law and that of most 
Dutch towns then did direct and still does direct. 



/ 



NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME 95 

The ruts of their wagons, after long litigation and 
through the influence of New York State, have 
become the gauge of standard width in the United 
States, bringing order out of confusion. They set 
the gable end of their houses fronting the street 
so that they might save the rain water for washing 
and that the snow in winter might fall into their 
own yards, and not on the people in the streets. 
They enjoyed, with abounding delight of body and 
soul, even as they rigidly observed, the Kermiss, 
New Year's Day, Easter, Whitsuntide, and other 
holy anniversaries and seasons, closing the twelfth 
month with two festivals, one of St. Nicholas, or 
Santa Claus, on December 6, and the other of 
Christmas, on December 25. 

At church they always gave money in two col- 
lections, which were taken up by the deacons in 
velvet bags hitched to the end of long poles. They 
worshiped in a two-hour morning service, and were 
scandalized if it were shorter. They listened to the 
hour-long sermon, delivered in two parts, didactic 
and practical, and invariably divided by a collec- 
tion in between. Of the two almsgivings, one was 
for the Church, the other for the poor. They fed 
and dressed comfortably. When born, they were 
baptized at the font in the church. When mature, 
they were married in their homes, taking up a col- 
lection for the poor. At the communion table, they 
were cheered and warned in the words of the noble 
liturgy of the Reformed Church, duly established 



96 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

in the Netherlands in 1568, and soon growing by 
expansion in other lands and continents. 

There were scores of Dutch churches in Asia, 
Africa, the West Indies, and South America, long 
before there was one organized in New Nether- 
land, in 1628. These were governed by a consis- 
tory composed of the reverend Domine, elders, and 
deacons, and further officered by a fore-singer, 
Scripture-reader, Comforter of the sick, or church- 
master, one and all, as the case might be, or, as in 
some instances, with every one of these officers. 
In Dutch Formosa was the largest foreign mis- 
sionary station then known to any national or free 
church in Europe, and the first, on a great scale, 
in modern times. The Classis of Amsterdam was 
in itself the greatest missionary society in Eu- 
rope, and, in fact, the general agent of Protestant 
Europe, and helped many thousands of people, 
British, German, French, and Walloon, besides 
Netherlanders, to get to America. 

I enjoyed none of my many rambles in the 
Netherlands, during seven visits, more than when 
I visited Guelderland and the Nijkerk neighbor- 
hood. There I saw more intimately, and visited 
oftener than elsewhere, the homes of the peasan- 
try and the common people, noticing how, in the 
Mohawk and Hudson valleys, the first settlers 
copied the models of the home land, in house, 
church, customs, speech, and, at first, even in cos- 
tume, footgear and headgear, and curious notions. 



NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME 97 

In the twentieth century Nijkerk has a popula- 
tion of 8124. We may sum up what Terwen said, 
in his three-volume album of the Kingdom of the 
Netherlands, rich in steel plates, published a gen- 
eration or two ago : — 

"Nijkerk lies in the midst of tobacco lands, 
pretty gardens, and grainfields, three fourths of 
an hour's walk from the Zuyder Zee, with which 
it has communication by means of a good harbor. 
It is two hours [as the pipe is smoked, or the 
feet can carry one] northeast of Amersfoort, on 
the streetway from that city to Harderwijk and 
Zwolle." 

In Amersfoort was born John of Barneveld, 
and in Zwolle lived Thomas a Kempis, and Baron 
van der Capellen, whose ancestor was a patroon on 
Staten Island, and who was himself our generous 
friend in the Revolution, to whose honor and 
memory, on June 6, 1908, the Holland Society 
of New York reared a noble bronze tablet. 

Nijkerk is moderately large in its compass, and 
possesses fourteen streets, a free Reformed church 
on the Holker Street, with an unusually fine or- 
gan and a handsome clock tower with chimes and 
dial ; a Roman Catholic church, with tower and 
organ ; a church of the Seceders (Christian Re- 
formed, now numerous in Iowa, Dakota, and 
Michigan) ; and two synagogues, of which only 
one is used. Besides these, are the very imposing 
new edifice, the Reformed Church Hospital, and 



98 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

a Home for Old Men and Women, with a build- 
ing for the Koman Catholic church community 
and carried on by Sisters of Mercy, good provi- 
sion for public instruction, and methods for the 
prevention of beggary, etc. In the neighborhood 
lies the free open space of Salenstein. To-day, 
alert, clean, bright, with all modern equipments, 
Nijkerk enjoys daily communication with the 
outer world by means of post, telegraph, tele- 
phone, bicycles, automobiles, and seventy railway 
trains daily. 

Such are the usual features of a typical Dutch 
town, showing ample provision for worship, bene- 
volence, recreation, and industry, and all these 
were established from times remote. Here are the 
markets for the sale of fish, cattle, vegetables and 
grain, live stock of various sorts, cheese, and the 
products of the cow. All around are the evidences 
of that human toil which, after a thousand years 
of labor, has made a garden of the old sea-bot- 
tom, over which fish used to feed and disport 
themselves. 

Until both Orient and Occident revealed their 
mysteries, neither pipes nor potatoes, tea nor cof- 
fee, sugar nor cheap spices were known in Nijkerk. 
A new social era dawned comparatively late in 
the seventeenth century, when American tobacco, 
the Arabian bean, the Chinese leaf, and the In- 
dian tuber were brought to " the dorp." The fried 
or baked potato, dipped in gravy, eked out the 



NIJKERK: THE OLD HOME 99 

midday meal, and tlie earthen coffee-pot simmered 
at the window to cheer the toiler, unloosen the 
tongue, and tap the social virtues. In time, that 
is, in the eighteenth century, the Delft ware on the 
dresser and tiles at the chimney side were com- 
mon enough. Tobacco smoking, never at first al- 
lowed in the house, became the luxury of the men 
as they sat on the side seat of the front door 
" stoep," that is, the step, or porchway ; but all 
these novelties were long after the time of Henry 
Hudson. Most of them were next to unknown 
until after 1650. Emigration to New Netherland 
occupied scarcely forty years, beginning in 1623 
and ceasing in 1663. 

Happy was it for Kilian van Rensselaer, the 
Patroon of Guelderland's mediaeval acres, that, 
when he wanted to create a principality in the 
New World, his long and happy acquaintance 
with the sons of the soil and daughters of his 
neighbors enabled him to draw upon a reserve of 
sturdy young manhood and womanhood. There is 
a reason why the manor of Rensselaerwijk was 
the only successful one in New Netherland. 

It may be that some of van Rensselaer's ap- 
pointments to office — as when he raised his 
nephew, Walter van Twiller, from being a clerk 
in the West India Company's counting-house to 
be the Director-General of New Netherland — 
were not happy. Yet most of those selected by 
him, young as they were, made an excellent 



100 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

record in the New World. Chief of these was 
the immortal Arendt van Curler, whose name the 
Indians made the title for governors, kings, and 
emperors. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE MAKER OF THE SILVER CHAIN 

The settlement, or " colonie," near Fort Or- 
ange, was at first named from the shape of the 
land at the riverbank, the Dutch word meaning 
hoop-net, and the old neighborhood in Albany is 
still so called. 

Later, this gave way to Beverwijk, or Beaver 
Town, from the plenteousness of beaver skins 
seen in the trade with the Indians, though there 
is a town in North Holland, not far from Am- 
sterdam, also named Beverwijk. Ultimately, 
when the settlement flourished under Arendt van 
Curler, it was very properly called Rensselaer- 

wijk. . 

"Heroes are made early." The coming ot 
Arendt van Curler opened a new chapter in the 
history of the Patroon's colony. He was seventeen 
years old when he crossed the Atlantic, in Decem- 
ber, 1637. 

The van Curler estate near Pu^ten m Guelder- 
land, not far from Nijkerk, is mentioned in the 
list of property owners made in 1313. Gosen van 
Curler was the schout, or sheriff, of Nijkerk, in 
1593. In the Book of Baptisms of the Reformed 
Church (1593-1620) is the record that on the 



102 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

29th of August, 1594, " Gosen Coder's and Gert- 
gen Boldewin's child was baptized and named 
Henrick." This Henrick was the father of Arendt 
van Curler, who was baptized February 6, 1620. 
In 1637 he went to New Netherland, first as assist- 
ant to the schout at Rensselaerwijk, but later was 
made commissary or superintendent. He made 
a success of the drooping settlement, which ulti- 
mately became Albany, and later, in 1661, he 
founded Schenectady. His name lives immortal 
not only on the landscape of New York, but in the 
title bestowed by the Iroquois on the Governor of 
the Empire State and the King of Great Britain. 
Other records at Nijkerk tell of both Arendt and 
Jacobus van Curler. The old van Curler home- 
stead, " Corlaar," made modern in appearance, still 
stands amid flowers and canals. 

After Arendt van Curler had served for a while 
as subordinate at Rensselaerwijk, he was pro- 
moted by the Patroon to be superintendent, and 
at once set to work to improve the comfort of the 
settlers. His jurisdiction extended from Beeren, 
or Bear's Island, in the Hudson, to the northern 
boundary between the Algonquin and Iroquois, at 
Kock Regio, or Rock Dunder, in Lake Cham- 
plain, now opposite Burlington, Vermont. He pro- 
vided food and shelter for the numerous emigrants 
arriving at Rensselaerwijk, and arranged that there 
should be no delay at Manhattan. This he some- 
times did by bringing the people up the river in 



THE MAKER OF THE SILVER CHAIN 103 

fast canoes paddled by Indians instead of in slow 
sloops. The freight might come later, but van 
Curler believed in settling the farmers on the land 
at once. He then enlarged and developed, withal 
putting on an unshakable basis, the Dutch policy 
of peace with the Indians. 

Van Curler was one of the first men to perceive 
the true humanity of the native American and to 
realize his value. The Indians were so very nu- 
merous all around, that it would have been easy 
for them to combine and overwhelm the new set- 
tlement, but van Curler, besides being a noble 
character, had learned experience from the folly 
of the Manhattan rulers. Studying into causes 
which made Indian wars in Virginia and New 
England so disastrous, and being a Christian of 
the right sort, as well as a believer that the con- 
tinent was big enough for both its first inhabitants 
and the newcomers, he renewed with the Iroquois, 
but with solemn and imposing ceremonies, the 
league of peace. " The covenant of Corlaer " was 
always referred to by the Indians as " the Silver 
Chain of Friendship." 

Van Curler knew the French also, and under- 
stood how well suited the Latin races were for 
gaining influence and control through their alli- 
ance with the Indians. He foresaw the coming 
struggle between those two types of civilization, 
the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon (the Angles and 
Saxons were Dutch before they were English), 



104 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

and he determined to keep friendship inviolable 
with the red man. 

"Faithful to his trust as agent of the Patroon, 
van Curler sometimes found matters of duty dis- 
agreeable. The rules of the Company forbade free 
trade in "the bush " or open forest, and in carry- 
ing out the Patroon's orders, he came into collision 
with Adrian van der Donck, the first lawyer in 
New Netherland. " Every peasant was a trader," 
as de Vries had noticed, and the Patroon's right 
of monopoly must be maintained and enforced. 
This brought on a struggle. The " bos-lopers," 
wood runners, or irregular forest traders, in pro- 
test, put their names to a paper in a circle, so that 
it should not be known who had first signed the 
*' round robin." Thus the ringleader was anony- 
mous. They employed the young lawyer, van der 
Donck, then the only one in New Netherland, 
as their advocate; but they failed, because the 
Patroon had his rights of monopoly confirmed 
by charter. Showing this document, van Curler 
gained his point and regained his popularity. 
Even during the time of Kieft's war, van Curler's 
firm hand in the colony and unbounded influence 
with the Five Nations were like a wall of fire 
guarding the prosperity of the colony. 

The social life of the future capital city began 
around and centred in the congregation, when in 
1643 a church neighborhood, or parish, was created 
by van Curler, the commissary, and Megapolensis. 



THE MAKER OF THE SILVER CHAIN 105 

The Domine at once began the study of the Mo- 
hawk dialect, which, belonging to the Iroquois 
family of languages, was very different from the 
Mohican speech. It was hard work at first, but 
Virtus vim vicit, as the arms of Haarlem have it. 
Intellect overcame the brute force of inertia. In 
time he was able to preach to the savages, and won 
not a few of them to such a measure of Christianity 
as they could receive. In the case of the children 
taken young and steadily taught, he was very suc- 
cessful. 

The scholarly man from civilization in a world 
of wild men was amused at what he saw. Until 
about twelve, the copper-colored little folks wore 
only Nature's covering. In summer their elders 
followed suit, literally. The Indians' skin was so 
hardened to the elements, that the ordinary house 
diseases of the white man were unknown to them. 
In winter they wore clothes taken directly off the 
deer and bear. Moccasins and leggings were of 
buckskin, but the natives plaited corn leaves to- 
gether, making a rustling suit of clothes that seemed 
odd indeed. They painted their faces red or blue, 
" making: themselves look like the devil." When 
they bought coarse duffel, or frieze, similar to 
our Ulster cloth, they were very proud of the 
woven stuff, thinking it very fine. The squaws out- 
did the Dutch maids and mothers in dressing their 
hair, and the styles of their headgear were some- 
times astonishing. They used bear's grease on their 



106 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tresses, and smeared it over their bodies to keep 
away parasites. The men hunted, fished, and 
fought. The hoe and the cradle were beneath them. 
The women did all the work at the fire and in the 
field, yet were able to bring forth their children 
without ceasing their toil for more than a few 
minutes. The newborn babes were washed in the 
cold river, or even in the snow. According to the 
Domine's notion, marriage was unknown among 
the savages. 

The " Wilden " were great eaters. Carrying their 
kettles, dried corn, and wooden bowls and spoons 
with them, they cooked a meal whenever it suited 
them. After taking prisoners they tortured them, 
making them dance and sing. Sometimes they 
roasted and ate their prizes. In war they usually 
spared the children and the women, unless the lat- 
ter were very old. In pain and disease they thought 
the devil was biting them. Indeed, the wild men 
were almost as diligent as some Christians are in 
attributing all things undelightf ul to " the devil." 
Him they considered to be a very industrious 
person. At first the Domine thought savages en- 
tire strangers to all " religion." This was because 
they laughed at the Dutchmen when praying. 
Learning what was being done in church, they 
were much impressed. Until they understood what 
worship in the Christian way meant, it was all very 
comical to them, but they were too polite to make 
any disturbance when invited into the pews. They 



THE MAKER OF THE SILVER CHAIN 107 

came with long pipes in their mouths, smoking 
tobacco, as at their own pow-wows. They were 
very much put out to find that they must not 
answer the Domine when he was talking. They 
innocently asked what he wanted, that he stood 
and talked so much when no one else spoke a 
word. 

Part of the regular morning worship, according 
to the Netherlands liturgy, was the reading of the 
Ten Commandments. The Domine told them that 
he was admonishing the Christians not to do any 
wrong, not to steal, murder, commit adultery, or 
even to drink to drunkenness. He said also that 
the Mohawks ought not to do these things, and he 
promised when he knew the language better to go 
into their country and teach them. The Indians, 
genuine Pharisees of their own kind, asked why 
the white men did such naughty things. They 
had a great opinion of themselves, and considered 
themselves very smart. Their common name for 
the Dutchmen was " cloth -makers," or "iron- 
workers," because they could weave and had metal 
tools. 

Arendt van Curler, ever busy in developing the 
manor, remained in the service of the Patroon 
until the death of the latter. With his bride, An- 
tonia Slaghboom, who may have been the widow 
of Jonas Bronk, he visited his native country 
and Nijkerk in 1644. He had made Rensselaerwijk 
a success. His name is fitly inscribed in the cathe- 



108 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

dral in the capital city of the Empire State, as one 
of its founders. 

There were three van Curlers in the colony, 
the second, on Manhattan Island, being Anthony, 
the trumpeter. In the records of Nijkerk we do 
not find his name. He was probably not of kin to 
the worthy church masters, town officers, and the 
cultured and benevolent folk in Guelderland. Yet 
in the mythology of New Netherland his figure is 
unique and colossal. He stands in popular notion 
next to Peter Stuyvesant. His place in the writ- 
ten record, however, occupies less than five lines. 
At an outdoor dinner in the fort given to the de- 
parting de Vries and his crew, after their Dela- 
ware venture, Anthony sounded a blast. Two petty 
officers of the company, one a storekeeper of the 
fort and the other of the ship, for some reason, 
scolded the trumpeter roundly. Thereupon van 
Curler gave them a thrashing, and in vengeful 
mood they ran home for their swords. After pour- 
ing out their wrath at the Director's house and 
sleeping over the matter, they concluded not to 
fight. In the morning, " they feared the trumpeter 
more than they sought him." This is all that 
history tells of the renowned Anthony, who in 
legend is a veritable Brocken spectre, his nose a 
mountain, his power to break maidens' hearts un- 
measured, and his determination invincible ; yes, 
Spuyten DuyviU that is, in spite of the devil. 

Jacobus van Curler of Nijkerk, cousin of Arendt, 



THE MAKER OF THE SILVER CHAIN 109 

on his return from Connecticut, whither he had 
been sent by van Twiller, bought land on Man- 
hattan from four Indian chiefs at the place front- 
ing the East River, since famous as Corlaer's 
Hook, near the end of Grand Street. He became 
a member of the Governor's Council, and was later 
a schoolmaster and a property owner on Long 
Island. He was ever a friend of the Indians and 
a useful citizen of high character. He was one 
of the most prominent and influential men in the 
development of Long Island, — whose detailed his- 
tory we cannot even glance at. He remained in 
New Netherland until he was sixty years old, and 
then returned to Nijkerk. His is one of the names 
that adorn the annals of New Netherland. 



CHAPTER XII 

STUYVESANT AND HIS EULE 

Military men are usually failures as civil rul- 
ers, and Peter Stuyvesant, the next Director-Gen- 
eral of New Netherland, was no exception to the 
common experience. Nevertheless, his familiar fig- 
ure and personality have thrown all predecessors 
into the shadowy background. Being, as the people 
saw him, a creature of flesh, blood, clothes, wood, 
and silver, he was a most picturesque personage, 
on which fiction and caricature have delighted to 
dwell. His long career, of seventeen years in the 
public activities of the Dutch Manhattan village 
and eighteen years as a private gentleman in the 
social life of the English city, has left an enduring 
impression on the metropolis. Minuit, van Twiller, 
and Kieft are to-day but as profiles in silhouette, 
while Stuyvesant's features are clear and his por- 
trait is familiar. Indeed, he seems to be a living 
person among us. 

One of the brave man's legs had been lost in West 
Indian warfare, and had been replaced, through the 
combined services of the carpenter and silversmith, 
by a triumph of art and skill. Tradition, with 
varied tongue, tells of silver nails, studs, bands, 
or, and most probably, bullion lace as ornamenting 



STUYVESANT AND HIS RULE 111 

Lis timber supplement. From nursery legend alone, 
we can almost see '' Old Silvernails " stomping 
down Broadway and giving his orders like a gen- 
eral in battle. Among the scores of American place- 
names containing " silver^" at least one, in Con- 
necticut, Silvernails, famous for its eggs and 
poultry, recalls the popular nickname of the war- 
rior-governor. 

It was a bright, warm day on May 24, 1647, 
when the Director and his retinue stepped ashore 
near the fort. In this tall and dignified man, then 
forty-five years old, the people saw the son of a 
Domine, the scion of a noble family, a brave sol- 
dier, and an officer experienced in colonial admin- 
istration. 

Whatever his personal limitations, however co- 
lossal his egotism, or whatever his lack of sympa- 
thy with popular rights, Stuyvesant was in private 
character above reproach. With a high sense of 
honor he had purity of purpose. His honesty was 
above question, as his integrity was unspotted. In 
short, he had all the merits of a soldier and all 
the faults of a military man unsuited to civil 
government, and he met with the usual failure. 
With the conscience of a Roman functionary, he 
incarnated the corporation. He disliked personal 
opposition of any sort whatever, and he took it as 
a direct insult when the orders he gave were not 
instantly obeyed. 

So far from being a typical Dutchman, Peter 



112 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Stuyvesant was more like a Muscovite or Spaniard. 
In most of his public actions, he flew in the face 
of Dutch precedents, flouted the spirit of the Re- 
public, and trampled on the first instincts of free 
men. In this he was as narrowly conscientious as 
the Duke of Alva. Among the exceptionally un- 
wise things done by Stuyvesant was his prohibi- 
tion of popular amusements at Easter and Christ- 
mas time. 

Of much more importance for the social welfare 
of the colony than Stuyvesant's rigid military con- 
science, was the fact that he brought with him 
a wife, and thus made a home. Van Twiller and 
Kieft were probably lone men, without the re- 
straints of a household. With the new Governor, 
however, came ladies of character and refinement, 
and of Huguenot origin. Mrs. Samuel Bayard, 
whose husband had been a brother of Mrs. Stuy- 
vesant, accompanied the Governor's wife. With 
her three children, Peter, Balthasar, and Nicholas, 
Mrs. Bayard assisted her brother and sister-in-law, 
and was helped by them to make a home for her 
sons in the New World. With two such women of 
culture, Manhattan society was sure to be elevated. 
Happily also van Dincklagen, the officer who 
assisted in bringing about the removal of van 
Twiller and Kieft, remained in office, to be, as be- 
fore, a champion of the people. 

It was probably the disputes with England, then 
looming up towards war, that prompted the ap- 



STUYVESANT AND HIS RULE 113 

pointment of a purely military character like Stuy- 
vesant. However, the new Governor found that 
one of his first tasks was with impudent cattle 
rather than with trespassing Yankees. The cows, 
mounting the grassy slopes of the fort to graze, 
not only threatened to trample down the defenses 
of New Amsterdam, but actually looked down un- 
enviously upon the garrison. The hogs, rooting up 
the earthen walls, leered at the soldiers and sniffed 
at the heroes within. The Governor at once called 
for reform and repair, but in the wrong way. He 
did not live up to the Dutch doctrine of "no taxa- 
tion without consent," for which his countrymen 
were even then fighting at home. He ordered the 
impounding of cattle and the levying of a tax to 
rebuild and enlarge the fort. 

At once this military commander met with the 
sturdy resistance of patriotic freemen. He found 
that his countrymen had changed their skies, but 
not their steadfast minds. Refusing to be slaves of 
a corporation, they demanded the same rights as 
in the Fatherland. They declined to pay the taxes 
which they did not themselves vote. This right 
of representation in government and the voting of 
taxes had been the Netherlanders' cherished pos- 
session since the Crusades, when they had won it 
from their feudal lords. It was questioned only 
by the Spanish King, whom they had abjured for 
treachery. Now, in a new world, the people did 
not propose to revert to mediaeval ways at the 



114 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

beck and nod of a man with a feudal baron's 
mind. 

Among those of the Nine Men who steadfastly 
resisted Stuyvesant was Adrian van der Donck, 
who might almost be called the father of the real 
city, as compared with the earlier hamlet, of New 
Amsterdam. A graduate of the University of 
Leyden, he hated to see law trampled under foot 
either by a corporation or by its creature. Being, 
like several other choice men in New Netherland, 
a yonkheer, or young lord, he bought a manor of 
the Indians north of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, which 
was called *' the Yonkheer's Land," and thus 
his title remains in the name of the town which 
grew upon it. When the Nine Men proposed to 
call a town meeting, after the ancient style known 
in Patria for ages, Stuyvesant took van der 
Donck's act as a personal insult, and threw the 
lawyer into prison. Later, he treated van Schlech- 
tenhorst, the Patroon's agent, in the same way. 

Just at this juncture there arrived from Holland 
Mynheers Melyn and Kuyter. They were armed 
with an order from the States-General condemn- 
ing the Director, and ordering him to defend him- 
self by attorney from the charges against him. 
This quieted the lion, and he behaved himself by 
freeing van der Donck. But when "John Com- 
pany" sent Stuyvesant a letter, he became obsti- 
nate and vindictive again. Then the Nine Men, in the 
name of the people, prepared their famous Vertoogh, 



STUYVESANT AND HIS RULE 115 

or Remonstrance. Van der Donck was their pen- 
man. Tliey asked that the Dutch National Con- 
gress should assume the direct rule over New 
Netherland, that they at New Amsterdam should 
have a burghers' or municipal government, and 
that the boundaries of New Netherland should be 
rectified by treaty and clearly defined. 

Van der Donck, with facile pen and pleasing 
voice, succeeded with the States-General so far as 
to get municipal government for New Amsterdam, 
and an order to the Director to inaugurate it. 
Nevertheless, corporationism was then as strong in 
the Dutch as it is now in the American Republic. 
Men high in the Government at the Hague used 
vested rights in defiance of popular wishes and 
welfare. The great argument against justice and 
righteousness was the West India Company itself. 
These monopolists scouted the idea of popular 
government, and could see no need of change in 
either conditions or the Directorship. This stiffened 
Stuyvesant's back, and his behavior more closely 
than ever resembled that of a Japanese daimio or a 
spoiled child. Besides browbeating and insulting 
the Nine Men, he attempted to smother represen- 
tative government by leaving unfilled the vacancies 
in the Board of Nine Men as they occurred, but 
once again these appealed to the States-General 
with effect, and in 1653 municipal government was 
proclaimed. 

The burgomaster, schout, and schepens met 



116 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

once a week in the City Hall or Stadt-Huys 
(whence our word " State House "), and after due 
form of prayer proceeded to business. With a 
craft quite equaling what we have so often seen 
in our free' land, the "machine," consisting of 
" John Company " and Peter, had so " fixed " it 
that the Director not only appointed the city offi- 
cers, but even made ordinances on his own account. 
Stuyvesant never lacked vigor and conscientious 
industry, and from 1653 dates an era of progress 
and prosperity on Manhattan and in New Nether- 
land at large. 

Yet the credit of good results in no sense be- 
longs to Stuyvesant, but rather to van der Donck. 
In Holland, this legal gentleman, true father of 
municipal New York, himself became literally a 
stuyvesant^ or stirrer up of the sand. He labored 
incessantly both by voice and pen. Besides discus- 
sions at the Hague and a fierce war with printer's 
ink against "John Company," he wrote in 1655 a 
book entitled " A Description of New Netherland," 
which was widely read by all classes. It awakened 
more general interest and curiosity in the new 
land beyond sea than anything yet attempted. In 
some of its pictures the artist told fairy tales and 
got his imaginary animals, from the menageries 
of heraldry and mythology, mixed with those of 
reality in one happy family. It is amusing to see 
unicorns on Manhattan, elks that seem to be fight- 
ing horses, beavers snarling at hyenas, and eagles 



STUYVESANT AND HIS RULE 117 

making prey of the unicorn, to say nothing of 
palm trees and other tropical features. Van der 
Donck was not the first author whose text was 
contradicted by the illustrations put in by his 
publishers. The first and best description of the 
American beaver is found in this book, in which, 
also, with a warning against the awful waste of 
timber, we find a noble plea for forest preservation. 
Accurate in telling what he saw, van der Donck 
was at times misled by what he heard. Neverthe- 
less, through van der Donck's leaven, the colony 
became a real New Netherland, worthy of its 
name. 

When men of all the various creeds and nationali- 
ties who breathed the air of freedom in the Dutch 
Republic were assured of similar privilege in New 
Netherland, many crossed the Atlantic. Between 
1653 and 1664, the population increased to about 
twelve thousand, of whom three thousand were on 
Manhattan. If any one should be honored with 
a statue by the citizens of New York, it is van 
der Donck. To him belongs largely the credit 
of changing the trading-post into a cosmopolitan 
city, in which twenty languages were spoken, and 
one to which came children of the same Heavenly 
Father who sought Him in many ways, and who 
under a governor like Minuit might have dwelt as 
brothers in one family. 

It was a wolf's welcome that Stuyvesant gave 
the Lutheran, the Jew, the Quaker, the Anabap- 



118 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tist, the Independent, and all who attended " con- 
venticles," that is, little meetings, apart from the 
Dutch Church. 

The Lutherans in Holland had perfect freedom 
of worship, but when those on Manhattan asked 
for permission to worship publicly in their own 
way, they were denied. Bigotry, in the person 
of the Director, fell back on its " oath " and on 
Domine and Classis, and " one of the crowning 
glories of the Fatherland, freedom of conscience 
and worship, was for a season denied to New 
Netherland." In time, after petty annoyances, and 
when the Director had been rebuked even by the 
Company, the Lutherans found peace, freedom, 
and prosperity, being now the fourth largest re- 
ligious body in the United States. 

When the Portuguese recaptured Brazil, the 
Jews had to fly for life. In September, 1654, in 
the little Dutch ship St. Catrina — the Amer- 
ican Hebrews' Mayflower — twenty - three fugi- 
tives arrived at Manhattan. Their goods were 
promptly sold at auction for the passage money. 
Harshly treated by Stuyvesant, they waited pa- 
tiently until deliverance came from "the land 
where conscience was free." The Company rebuked 
their Director for his utterly un-Dutch behavior, 
and the States-General in 1655 gave special per- 
mission to the Jews to live and trade in New 
Netherland. In time New York became the lar- 
gest Jewish city, and the College of the City of 



STUYVESANT AND HIS RULE 119 

New York — the man child of Townsend Har- 
ris's brain and heart — " the greatest Jewish Uni- 
versity," in the world. 

In their illiberal policy, the local authorities in 
Church and State acted contrary to the procedure 
in the Fatherland. The best apology we can make 
for either the clerical or the military persecutors 
on Manhattan is that they were men of their age. 
It seems, also, to be a law of nature that provincial 
people usually exceed those in the Fatherland in 
the intensity of their convictions. The prevailing 
sentiment in the Netherlands was that of modera- 
tion, and the temper that of Erasmus and William 
the Silent, rather than that of men who mistook 
their own will and ism, when linked with power, 
for God's will and truth. 

Stuyvesant's genius as a soldier shone in war, 
and in military operations his record is admirable. L^ 
He understood the character of the Indians, real- 
ized the intense pride of the Iroquois, and nego- 
tiated successfully with the Mohawks, but he 
frowned upon all suggestions, at home or from 
Holland, that savages should be employed as al- 
lies in war. Stuyvesant laid out the village of 
Esopus, in what is now the oldest part of Kings- 
ton, garrisoned it, and inflicted condign punish- 
ment upon the savages who massacred the whites 
at Wiltwijk. He resisted successfully the attempts 
of Englishmen to make a lodgment for trade upon 
the Delaware. He visited Hartford, and by his 



120 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

negotiations, as well as by his firmness with the 
English settlers on Long Island, staved off the in- 
evitable inrush of the multiplying New England- 
ers, and nullified the secret plots of England's un- 
scrupulous rulers. 

Faithful to the corporation which he repre- 
sented, he tried to destroy the Patroon's jurisdic- 
tion, repeatedly visiting Fort Orange and Rens- 
selaer wijk, or sending soldiers to enforce the 
Company's authority there. With a true dog-in- 
the-manger spirit, " John " and Peter refused to 
have Arendt van Curler's settlement at Schenec- 
tady surveyed, lest these free farmers on the Mo- 
hawk might trade with the Indians. At these 
freemen we will now glance. 



CHAPTER XIII 

OUTSIDE FEUDALISM: THE FREE FARMERS 

" In Netherlands' story the people is ever the 
true hero," wrote Motley, who told one part of 
the patriots' story in Patria. Yet no less true is 
this in the story of Dutch America. The pompous 
corporation officials have attracted attention, even 
to caricature or transfiguration, but it was the 
plain people who made New Netherland. Theirs 
were the heroic figures, and the best things in the 
Empire State are inheritances from them. Like 
most office-holders, the Company's servants suc- 
cumbed to the intoxication of authority, but the 
people sanely and soberly laid the foundations 
and reared the enduring structure. On Long 
Island, at Esopus and New Paltz, and especially 
at Schenectady, — places outside of feudalism and 
only in^part subject to "John Company," — was 
this truth most manifest. 

Arendt van Curler was a true people's man. 
There was a number of farmers with their families 
at Rensselaerwijk, who, preferring freedom to im- 
mediate prosperity, wished to settle outside the Pa- 
troon's manor. They would rather take the risks 
of living on the frontier, and thus own their 
homes, than be semi-serfs under feudalism. 



vy 



122 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

The " Patroon was always present in his court- 
baron," theoretically at least, and the colonists of 
the manor were subject to such laws as the Patroon 
or his deputies might establish. The colonists of 
the manor also promised that they would not 
appeal from the manorial court to the Director- 
General and Council at Fort Amsterdam. From 
this galling restraint, the free farmers, led by van 
Curler, would be free under the liberal provisions 
of the act of the States-General of 1640. In name 
and theory. New Netherland was past and gone 
when Schenectady was settled, but was Dutch to 
the core, and remained so until the Revolution, 
when its people became intensely American and 
loyal to the Continental Congress. 

Schenectady was not the only free village or- 
ganized before the fall of New Netherland. In 
1652 some free farmers, who chafed under mano- 
rial rule and wanted to be owners of the soil they 
tilled and not semi-serfs, came and settled at 
Esopus. Receiving the soil as a free gift from the 
Indians, the settlement was named Wiltwijk ; that 
is, the Place of the Willing Gift, or the Town of 
Good Will. Stuyvesant, in the name of the Com- 
pany, bestowed also a charter, giving the people 
the powers possessed by other incorporated towns, 
including the idea of rotation in office. Roeloff 
Swartwout was appointed the first schout or sheriff, 
taking rank above the burgomasters and schepens. 
There were Indian wars and troubles which can- 



OUTSIDE FEUDALISM 123 

not be here noted. After the English conquest, 
the place was named Kingston. 

As was natural for a people coming from a 
land rescued from the ocean, whose highways were 
canals, the Dutchman settled at the mouth of or 
along streams which flow into the river. 

The Dutchman had an eye for good land, mak- 
ing such excellent choice that, unlike the New Eng- 
landers, who lived for the most part on poor soil, 
the debris of glaciers, and who abandoned their 
holdings, the farms of the Hudson River region 
passed down from father to son through successive 
generations. This is probably the reason why the 
Dutch of the river counties of New York con- 
tributed so much smaller a proportion of emi- 
grants to the fertile fields of the West than New 
England or any other part of the East ; although 
the Germans in Pennsylvania were very much like 
the Dutch in New York in this respect. 

In the Netherlands, a country of city republics, 
even from feudal times, almost every important 
town or city was fortified, usually with geometric 
fortifications, or many-sided ramparts and moats. 
At the junction or corner between the walls and 
uniting them, was a little round sconce or fort, 
which being of circular shape was called a ron- 
duit. In 1614 men of the United New Netherland 
Company built one of these small fortifications 
at the mouth of the creek ; hence the name " Ron- 
dout," — now part of the city of Kingston. Here 



124 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

was the first capital of New York State, here its 
constitution was adopted, here yet stands the Sen- 
ate House, rich in relics of earlier days, and here 
rises the grand edifice of the old Eeformed Dutch 
Church, organized in 1659, the present superb 
structure dating from early in the last century. 
It enshrines the records of the congregation, com- 
plete and unbroken from 1660. As illustrating the 
common idea of associating the Church with the 
school, provision was early made for education, 
and here, in 1773, the Kingston Academy, one of 
the earliest and possibly the first school of a high 
grade in the state, was founded, being in 1864 
merged into the free school system. The year 1908 
saw the reinterment, with military and civil honors, 
of the first governor of New York, George Clinton. 
There were several places named the " New 
Dorp," one being on Staten Island. One was made 
in 1662 by settlers who moved back from Wiltwijk, 
although all new villages, Schenectady, for ex- 
ample, did not retain this descriptive name. New 
Dorp, near Wiltwijk, was named Hurley, after 
the English governor's paternal estate. Louis du 
Bois, the Walloon (hence the Walkill or Walloon's 
stream), settled at New Dorp, and afterwards 
led the pioneer band at New Paltz. Here was 
measured off, as in other Dutch villages, a common 
" for woods, pasturage and drifts of cattle," — the 
word drift in Dutch meaning course or run. At 
New Dorp they excluded from the proprietorship 



OUTSIDE FEUDALISM 125 

all who were not inhabitants of the town, for each 
dweller owned his house, and the adjacent plot 
was private property, while the rest of the terri- 
tory was collective property. New Paltz showed 
many of the peculiar characteristics of early village 
community life more distinctly, and for a longer 
time, than any other town along the Hudson River. 

The "Duke's laws," of which we shall hear 
more, recognized the village customs, that is, the 
voters were the freeholders, and suffrage was \y 
based on ownership of land. "Fence-viewers" 
were to be appointed, and every hog and cow must 
be marked with the public brand of the town and 
the private mark of the owner, or else be liable to 
be put into the penf old, or the " pound." The peo- 
ple made circular or ring fences many miles long, 
each owner of the land building, in proportion to 
his valuation, his part of the ring fence, while the 
fence-viewer must inspect all. The separate hold- 
ings were not, for many years, fenced off in sever- 
alty, nor, till near the nineteenth century, was 
any considerable proportion of the common tract 
divided by partition and allotment to individual 
proprietors. The same customs of land-holding pre- 
vailed in Dutchess County, in which was the water- 
fall called Poogkepesingh, or Poughkeepsie, and 
in which the first courthouse was constructed of 
wood furnished chiefly from the common. 

In the Wallkill valley, the name of the water 
suggests the presence of a foreigner or Walloon. 



126 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

The "Wallkill, flowing between the Hudson and 
the Delaware, rising in Sussex County, New Jersey, 
passes northeast into New York, intersecting 
Orange and Ulster counties, uniting with the 
Kondout Eiver. Thus it flows northward through 
picturesque scenery for about sixscore miles, while 
its three great neighbors, the Hudson, Delaware, 
and Susquehanna, flow southward. Here the Hu- 
guenots from the Paltz, or the Rhine Palatinate, 
came to find a home and peace in 1678. The first 
settlers purchased the land of the Indians, and 
most of the homesteads have been handed down 
in families ever since the first payment of wam- 
pum or the first deed of parchment. 

Like oil poured from vessel to vessel were these 
people, — first hounded from their native land, 
France, and then dragooned from the Rhine Valley. 
Their initial habitations were of logs, but these in 
time gave way to stone. The struggle with lan- 
guages was not merely from French (used until 
1733) to Dutch (spoken until 1800), but also from 
Dutch to English, so that many a New Paltzer en- 
joyed or wrestled with three vernaculars in his one 
lifetime. Hence the polyglot records of Ulster 
County. In the evolution of government, transit 
was made from a simple regulation of public affairs 
by the heads of families to government by the Du- 
sina or Twelve Men chosen annually. This dozen 
of dignitaries had supervision of the land titles, but 
most of the public questions as they emerged 



OUTSIDE FEUDALISM 127 

were decided by the body of voters. The name 
New Paltz, or New Palatinate, recalls the place of 
their temporary sojourn when driven out of France, 
and between the Rhine of Europe and the Rhine 
of America there was " a bond of union formed 
by the institutional relationship of the village 
community." New Paltz was the typical village 
community of the Hudson River. To-day their 
house of worship is among the noblest specimens 
of early nineteenth-century architecture. 

In the long struggle between the people and the 
corporation directed by Kieft and Stuy vesant, the 
Dutch spirit was ever manifest, until in 1652 the 
people succeeded in getting municipal government 
for New Amsterdam. Then also Beverwijk, made 
independent of the Patroon's colony, was released 
from feudal jurisdiction. Brooklyn and the ad- 
jacent towns on Long Island secured an increase 
of local authority. Then followed the great influx 
of Walloons, Huguenots, and Waldenses from Eu- 
rope and Puritans from New England, seeking 
through- ownership in land to obtain the rights, 
which elsewhere were denied them, in the name of 
God. From this time forth, the agricultural settle- 
ments increased, and under freer government, 
villages and towns grew up on lands granted di- 
rectly to those who were to cultivate the soil. 

In all the early villages in New Netherland, 
Brooklyn, New Amsterdam, Wiltwijk, the Long ,, 
Island towns, etc., there were common lands and 



128 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

a common pasture. The City Hall Park in New 
York still remains as the survival of a village 
common, on which the cows grazed every day, re- 
turning every night, under the guidance of the 
hornmen, as in ancient Patria. The "Bowery" 
meant not only the land inclosed, but the dwell- 
ing-house on it. " Bowery" was equivalent to the 
English expression "house and home." Every 
Dutchman who owned land, or had rights to the 
common timber or pasture, felt that he had a right 
to vote, and he cursed both Company and patroon 
that dared to deprive him of his ancestral rights, 
which, since the days of the Moot and the Mark 
and the lifting up of the chief on the shield, amid 
popular acclamation, he had not forgotten. 

Even in the days of Kieft, before he was a de- 
generate monopolist, his patent given to the town 
of Gravesend in the year 1645 to the settlers from 
New England is a charter of Dutch civil and re- 
ligious freedom, unlike anything known in Eng- 
land, giving the people the right to nominate and 
elect three of their ablest approved honest men to 
act as a local court, with the usual jurisdiction in 
all matters of local government. The gift of land, 
which secured with the ownership liberty of con- 
science and the selection of their own ministers, 
was the great encouragement to settle new regions. 
No writer has presented these facts more clearly 
than Mr. Irving Elting in his monograph, " Dutch 
Village Communities on the Hudson River." 



CHAPTER XIV 

DUTCH AND SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE RIVER 

After the failure of the Swaanendael venture 
of 1630, although no permanent Dutch settlement 
was made by the Dutch on the South River before 
1640, their fur-traders were busy on the Delaware 
and Schuylkill rivers, and in that region, until an 
invasion, as they considered it, on a large scale, 
from Sweden, called forth first their diplomacy, 
and then force. 

Usselinx saw the Swedish West India Company 
chartered as early as 1626. This was the year that 
the Princess Christina (whose name ought to be 
that of the State of Delaware) was born; but 
absorbed in the work of securing freedom of con- 
science, Gustavus Adolphus had to postpone the 
work of building up a New Sweden in America. 
Dying on the field of Lutzen, he left his darling 
project of a colony in America, " the jewel of his 
kingdom," to his daughter, then a little girl of 
eleven, of masculine education. Right royally 
did Queen Christina attempt to carry out her 
father's wish. Calling to her aid Peter Minuit, 
she bade him go and occupy the deserted Dela- 
ware region, dispatching him late in 1637 with 
two ships and fifty colonists to found New Sweden. 



130 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Just when the buds were opening, Minuit arrived 
inside Delaware Bay, in April, 1638, and began a 
settlement not far from Cape Henlopen and near 
Lewes in Delaware. One of the first buildings 
erected after the fort was the Lutheran church, 
the first in America. Rev. Reorus Torkillas was 
pastor of this Christian congregation. 

Minuit also built a fort at Minqua Kill, now 
within the limits of Wilmington, naming it after 
Queen Christina. He not only bought from the 
Indians the lands which the Swedes occupied, but 
he treated them with firmness and kindness, mak- 
ing them his fast friends. Later, the Swedish claim 
extended inland to the great falls of the Susque- 
hanna River. With his garrison of soldiers and 
ships of war Minuit laughed when, very soon 
after, he received notice from Director Kieft on 
Manhattan, that he was a trespasser and must be 
off. Kieft had no force to back his order, and was 
himself surprised at the answer the Company sent 
to his request for ships and soldiers. Instead of 
iron arguments, the Director was to use his elo- 
quence of persuasion ; but failing to oust the in- 
truders, was to live on as good terms with them 
as possible. What a change in the temper of the 
great fighting corporation that had swallowed up 
Spanish silver fleets and cities, very much as a 
shark devours herrings ! 

The truth is that this was a period of reaction 
in Holland against "John Company." The feeling 



DUTCH AND SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE 131 

soon expressed itself in the liberal charter of 1640, 
which limited the West India Company's power 
and encouraged what was next to impossible under 
the old regime, the growth of free village com- 
munities in New Netherland. When well-loaded 
ships sailed home from New Sweden, some enter- 
prising Dutchmen, who hated the close corporation 
in Amsterdam, united themselves in an independ- 
ent enterprise, and sent over a ship with colonists, 
well supplied, to settle on the Delaware. 

These freemen, who were opposed to patroons 
and manors, arrived just at the nick of time, for 
the Swedes had not yet been reinforced. The first 
glow of excitement was over, and trade was poor. 
Not having enough to eat, the colonists from Swe- 
den were about to move to Manhattan rather 
than starve. Everything changed when the Dutch 
ship, supplies, and people arrived. The Nether- 
landers, in hearty cooperation with the Scandina- 
vians, settled a few miles farther up the river. 
In the autumn, fresh reinforcements and provisions 
arrived in three ships from Sweden. Leaving to 
the new officers his command, Minuit left for the 
West Indies to develop trade. Even more hearty 
was the mutual agreement of Dutch and Swedes 
as against the Yankees, when, in 1641, a party 
from New Haven entered the river and settled on 
the Schuylkill and at Salem on the Delaware. As 
they had promised, when warned by Kieft, not to 
settle or trade in New Netherland, he garrisoned 



132 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Fort Nassau, and sent his agent Jansen in an 
armed ship to deport them. This was accomplished 
without bloodshed. So two nations, instead of 
three, dominated the region. 

In the West Indies, Minuit, while dining on a 
friend's ship, was caught in a storm and lost his 
life. In February, 1643, the second Swedish colony- 
arrived, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John 
Printz, an ojB&cer of great activity, but hardly, if 
Swedish critics judge aright, of brilliant military 
reputation. His avoirdupois was greater than his 
soldierly record. His weight was four hundred 
pounds. He settled Tinicum, building a fort on 
the island, and calling the place New Gottenburg, 
which soon became like a bustling little city. In 
1644 he built Fort Elsingburg on Salem Creek, 
on the other side of the river, where for a while 
the New Haven people had lived. All this was 
done in accordance with his orders from home to 
shut up the river. Printz ruled over his domain, 
which extended from the ocean to the falls where 
Trenton now is. Even the Dutch were compelled 
to strike their flag in passing, and no further 
settlements by them were permitted. 

On the intellectual side, the Swedes were quite 
equal to New Engianders or Dutchmen, and the 
catechism of the Lutheran Church was the first 
Protestant book to be translated into an Indian 
tongue, being put into Algonquin by the chaplain. 
Rev. John Campanius, who served from 1643 



DUTCH AND SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE 133 

to 1649 in his church on Tinicum Island, which 
was the first house of worship within the limits of 
Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the printing of the 
catechism was delayed until 1696. In the Lord's 
Prayer, the initial petition, instead of for " daily 
bread," is for plenty of corn and venison, — as best 
suiting an Indian. 

According to orders from Manhattan, Andries 
Hudde, a Dutchman, bought from the Indians in 
1642 the site of Philadelphia, and set up a pole, 
nailing on it the Company's arms. This Printz 
removed, tearing up Hudde's note of remon- 
strance and sending his messenger flying. Others 
who followed the first came back bruised and 
bloody. Yet Governor Kieft, having no force, 
could do nothing. Printz built a palisaded house 
on the Schuylkill ; but the Indians, now opposed 
to the Swedes, helped Hudde to build " Fort " 
Beversvrede. 

When Printz sent twenty men to destroy the 
Dutch stronghold, the Indians compelled them to 
retire. Then, to spite Hudde, Printz built a house 
right in front of Fort Nassau, shutting out the 
view of the river. Hudde was helpless. With only 
six men to garrison two forts, many miles apart, 
he could do nothing. 

Stuyvesant at last found time to attend to 
Printz and to investigate the claims of Sweden. He 
first headed off and turned back another party of 
fifty poachers in two ships from New Haven, and 



134 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

then, in July, 1651, started for Fort Nassau with 
a retinue and a chaplain, Samuel Megapolensis, 
son of the elder Domine. Meeting Printz, he de- 
manded evidences of ownership and documents 
of sale. The answer was that these might be in 
Stockholm, but were not there and then accessible. 
Stuyvesant thereupon bought of the sachems all 
the land on both sides of the river to the bay, ex- 
cept Fort Christina, which the Indians had sold to 
Minuit. Despite the protests of Printz, he built 
Fort Casimir on the site of the present Newcas- 
tle, four miles below the Swedish Fort Christina, 
naming it after his former commander, the Stadt- 
holder of Friesland, and paying the Indians for 
the land. 

After this Printz, left without resources, was 
quiet. Two years later he went back to Sweden, 
leaving his daughter's husband, Poppegoya, in 
command. As the Swedish colonists were not 
reinforced they were discouraged, until in May, 
1654, Governor Johan Rysingh arrived with two 
hundred colonists, a force of soldiers, and a chap- 
lain. 

On Trinity Sunday, 1654, the Swedes surprised 
and captured Fort Casimir, which had no powder 
in its magazine, and named it Fort Trinity. Stuy- 
vesant, after reporting to the Company the " in- 
famous surrender," was ordered to retake the 
fort and drive out the Swedes. Having an ex- 
pected attack from New England to provide 



DUTCH AND SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE 135 

for, he postponed his expedition until the war- 
ships King Solomon, Great Christopher, and the 
Balance, with a French privateer, the Hope, had 
come over from Amsterdam. Then on Manhattan 
the drum beat for volunteers, and every ship and 
house furnished men. Three river yachts joined the 
little squadron. On the first Sunday in Septem- 
ber, after sermon and worship, the seven vessels, 
with seven hundred men, — probably one third of 
all the able-bodied males in New Netherland, — 
and possibly the largest host of white men yet gath- 
ered for war on American soil, moved down the 
bay in gala array of flags and streamers. They 
made a picture worthy of a painter. Nevertheless, 
the wily savages did not fail to note the absence 
of the fighting men. 

On the following Friday, in the Delaware, a 
review was held and the building of batteries 
begun. By the 25th of September both Swedish 
forts were in the hands of the Dutch, by surrender, 
and without the shedding of a drop of blood. The 
Swedish flag was hauled dow^n, and the tricolor 
of the. Republic run up. The most honorable and 
generous terms were granted the Swedes. They 
could remain as settlers under the Company, or 
be repatriated. 

Nearly all the Swedes remained in their homes 
to add their gifts and graces of character to 
the building up of the commonwealths which 
became Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jer- 



136 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

sey. If they longed for revenge, they had only to 
wait nine years, before the English, whom they 
looked on to redress their wrongs, hoisted the flag 
of St. George. Gradually their form of worship 
and government — " The Old Swedes' Church " 
at Wecaco in Philadelphia and Trinity Church at 
Wilmington — became Episcopal and their speech 
changed to English. Holy Trinity Church, so rich 
in the memorials of Old and New Sweden in Del- 
aware, was rebuilt of brick in 1698, and is prob- 
ably the oldest church edifice in continuous use in 
the United States. Its historic graveyard includes 
the site of one of Stuyvesant's three-gun batteries. 

A few Netherlanders from time to time rein- 
forced their brethren on the South River. The 
land, after being quarreled over by the Duke of 
York and Lord Baltimore, was purchased by Wil- 
liam Penn. 

The Dutch settlement was named New Amstel, 
after Patria's chief city, on the river of this name. 
On his way to Long Island, in 1654, the Rev. 
Johannes Theodorus Polhemus, the Swiss ancestor 
of the great clan of Americans of that name, 
stopped at New Amstel. This Domine, long set- 
tled in the Palatine, whence he had been driven 
out by persecution, had served eighteen years in 
Brazil. He organized a Reformed church at New 
Amstel, and was the first to propose an association 
of Dutch American ministers and churches. Then 
Domine Welius followed, serving for two years. 



DUTCH AND SWEDES ON THE DELAWARE 137 

The congregation called a young man, Warnerus 
Hadson, who was duly ordained, but he died on 
the ocean passage. Then followed the ever popu- 
lar Tassemacher, who labored here from 1679 to 
1682. 

In 1888 our Swedish fellow citizens in the East 
and West, who, especially since 1830, have en- 
riched our national composite with their virtues, 
energies, and industry, celebrated the quarter-mil- 
lennial of the first settlement of their countrymen 
within the United States. 

Small as is the State of Delaware, it has a long 
and honorable history. Many landings of famous 
men and nationalities have been made on its shores, 
which face the ocean and a noble bay and river. 
The Dutch, the Swedes, the Cavalier English, 
the Quakers May and Verhulsten, Peter Minuit, 
George Holmes, and William Penn, stepped in suc- 
cession on the soil. The descendants of the original 
cosmopolitan population were bitterly opposed to 
British rule, and were ready at the Revolution to 
assert and maintain independence. The regiment 
of Continentals raised in the Diamond State — 
" the Blue Hen's Chickens " — made a noble record 
in battle and campaigns. 

To-day the trans-Atlantic suggestions and sur- 
vivals in Delaware are Swedish rather than Neth- 
erlandish. At Wilmington, Delaware's chief city, 
and especially in the old Trinity Church and bury- 
ing-ground, is this impressively so. Inquiring in 



138 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

one place for the Dutch colonial documents, I 
found that many of these papers in an unknown 
tongue had long since been used to light office 
fires. Yet there were and there are " Delaware 
Dutch," who annually, on January 23, celebrate 
ancestral virtues and triumphs with the " Nether- 
lands Society of Philadelphia." 

A woman's club for culture and a miniature 
Holland Society to recover and preserve Dutch 
history take their names from Swaanendael. In 
1905 the landing-place of the Dutch in the State 
of Delaware, the site of Fort Casimir, at New 
Castle, built in 1657, was marked by the unveiling 
of a granite monument, in the presence of many 
people from the four Middle States, which now 
occupy the area of New Netherland. The Dela- 
ware branch of the Society of Colonial Dames 
reared this reminder of the republicans who 
planted the orange, white, and blue flag on their 
soil. 

It is to the original settlement of the Dutch on 
her soil, and to their skillful diplomacy at the sur- 
render of 1664, that Delaware owes her existence 
as a separate state. We shall see, also, that here 
dwelt "the father of modern socialism," Peter 
Cornelius Plockhoy, whose English writings dur- 
ing the Commonwealth, in a later century, inspired 
the Brook Farm experiment in New England. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Neither legitimate trade nor colonization was 
necessarily the first idea witli " John Company." 
War, devastation of the Spanish possessions, cap- 
ture of silver and gold, and traffic in slaves were 
their primal objects. Against the pleading of 
Usselinx, who protested against slavery, these no- 
tions, economically false and in the end disas- 
trous, were embodied in the charter. On the seas, 
and in the West Indies and South America, this 
corporation secured its loot and made its greatest 
conquests. New Netherland was only a by-product. 
Indeed, if this northern colony had not been at 
first looked upon chiefly as a station on the way 
home from Brazil and the Caribbean Sea it might 
never have started. 

On the expiration of the Twelve Years' Truce, 
before one ship of colonists was dispatched to 
Manhattan, the first fleet had been sent to South 
America. The second expedition, in 1624, con- 
sisting of twenty-six ships, with five hundred can- 
non, sixteen hundred sailors and seventeen hun- 
dred soldiers, captured Bahia, or San Salvador, the 
seat of the Portuguese Government. In two years, 
eighty ships, with fifteen hundred cannon and 



140 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

nine thousand sailors and soldiers, had crossed the 
Atlantic. Although the Portuguese regained Bahia 
in 1625, yet in 1627 the Dutch took fifty-five ves- 
sels from the enemy, and in 1628 dispatched three 
great squadrons westward. 

One of these, under Piet Heyn, with thirty-one 
ships, seven hundred cannon, and four thousand 
men, captured the Spanish "plate" or silver fleet 
on September 8. The cargo of pearls, gold, silver 
(140,000 lbs.), indigo, sugar, aromatic woods, and 
furs was sold at auction for fifteen million guil- 
ders, over $15,000,000 in our values, and the West 
India Company declared a dividend of fifty per 
cent. Compared with such a prize. New Nether- 
land was more like forgotten Ishmael in the des- 
ert than princely Moses exalted among courtiers. 
Other fleets of privateers brought to the Com- 
pany's wharves the next year, 1629, one hundred 
and four prizes, or what would now be worth 
$8,000,000, so that dividends of fifty and twenty- 
five per cent were declared. In 1630 Brazil was 
taken and occupied. John Maurice, Count of 
Nassau, whose splendid old home on the Viver, 
at the Hague, is now a great picture gallery, 
was Governor-General of Brazil for eight years 
(1636-44). He brought home a fortune. Com- 
pared with the magnificent burglary of war, the 
settlement of the Hudson River region seemed but 
a trifle. 

All this fighting and robbing, permissible ac- 



THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND 141 

cording to the ethics of war, differed from true 
colonization, which means permanence. Planting 
a colony with roots was quieter but nobler work. 
The contrast between " a river of silver a yard 
deep " flowing into the Company's coffers from 
South America and the West Indies, and the 
slow returns from the colder climates of North 
America, in furs, fish, and grain, explains why it 
was that immigrants were hard to obtain for the 
new colony, and also why the Company neglected 
New Netherland, and even allowed official oppres- 
sion. Yet all the more clearly shines the true 
story of the Dutch in America, which is not that 
of official figure-heads, but of the " Commonality." 
Probably it reveals the reason why the first use 
of the phrase "the people," in an American docu- 
ment, occurred in New York State. 

This was the trans- Atlantic side of the matter, 
explaining why New Netherland fell. On American 
soil troubles were thickening. In 1663, two years 
after receiving its charter, Wiltwijk suffered the 
massacre by the Indians, and this seemed the 
signal for misfortunes to come on the gallop ; yet 
while "John Company" was falling on grief, 
" Farmer John " was rising to his own. The peo- 
ple's rights and representatives won. Under the 
combined pressure of a costly Indian war, in- 
vasion by Connecticut trespassers, the revolt of 
the English villages on Long Island, and an ex- 
hausted treasury, the principle of popular repre- 



142 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

sentation, despite the arbitrary Stuyvesant, was 
for the first time fully recognized in the province. 
The Assembly, elected b}^ plurality vote of the in- 
habitants of twelve Dutch villages in New Nether- 
land, gathered on Manhattan, April 12, 1664. 

It was too late to save either corporation or 
nationality. The exasperation and weariness in- 
duced by the long struggle for their rights had 
already prepared the people to yield to English 
rule ; but little or nothing was gained in the way 
of self-government. Within five months the flag 
of England floated over all New Netherland. 
Then the people of New York had to wait twenty 
years before they won back from England, or ra- 
ther from the Dutch King William III, what they 
had gained under Stuyvesant. 

From the South River, in 1663, the Director 
hurried back on call to Manhattan, for another 
Indian outbreak threatened the very existence of 
the colony. A Dutchman had shot a squaw while 
she was stealing some peaches in his orchard, and 
her own tribe quickly roused to vengeance the sav- 
ages of the New Jersey, Hudson River, and Con- 
necticut regions, to the number of nearly two 
thousand. From sixty-two war canoes, they landed 
at night on the nearly defenseless Manhattan, pre- 
tending to be looking for Iroquois. After loot- 
ing several houses, they were persuaded to leave 
the next night, but not until they had killed the 
squaw's murderer and another man. Driven ofE 



THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND 143 

by the burgher guard from the fort, they paddled 
over to Pavonia and Hoboken, and began a carni- 
val of murder and fire. Thence going to Staten 
Island, they ravaged the farms and tomahawked 
the people, about ninety in number. In three days, 
five hundred and fifty Dutch settlers were corpses 
or captives, or, ruined in estate, were fugitives 
suffering hunger. The terror-stricken people of 
Long Island and Esopus crowded into Manhattan, 
and cowered behind the palisades below what is 
now Wall Street. 

This was the situation when Stuy vesant returned, 
on October 12. He cheered up the people, strength- 
ened the wooden wall with a platform for soldiers 
to stand upon while repelling assailants, and im- 
pressed all able-bodied men on the ships as guards 
and soldiers. The Indians felt Stuyvesant's firm 
hand, and understood at once with whom they 
were dealing. The captives were for the most part 
ransomed, and gradually peace settled down. Stuy- 
vesant laid the blame of this Indian uprising on a 
few foolish men, and insisted that the people were 
too scattered, and that henceforth they should live 
concentrated in villages. 

This Indian calamity, following upon the enor- 
mous expense of the South River expedition against 
the Swedes, helped to seal the fate of New Neth- 
erland, which could no longer pay its expenses, 
while at home the Company was wabbling to- 
wards bankruptcy. The Delaware River lands 



144 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

were sold to the city of Amsterdam for seven hun- 
dred thousand guilders, or $3,500,000 in present 
values. This transaction helped a little, but the 
end was not far off. Peace with Spain in 1648 had 
crijDpled the fighting corporation. There were no 
more Spanish fleets to rob or towns to ravage, and 
"John Company" was not educated to make money 
by mere honest trade and peaceful, plodding busi- 
ness. 

The deceitfulness and uncertainty as well as 
the danger of sudden wealth, especially the sort 
y gained in the legalized robbery of war, were never 
more signally illustrated than in Spain first, and 
later in Holland. It meant bankruptcy for the 
West India Company, and for the Low Countries 
economic anaemia, poverty, and distress, until bet- 
ter ideas prevailed. 

Commercial rivalry between the Dutch and Eng- 
lish, strained to the breaking point, eventuated 
in a war for markets and selfish monopoly. The 
question of ship transportation ruptured the long 
and close friendship of centuries between Holland 
and England. The desire for pounds, shillings, 
and pence being stronger than sentiment, the men 
that were once brothers in their love of freedom 
began the slaughter of one another on the seas. 
The special prize was the Orient and its com- 
merce, New Netherland being only an appendix. 
Doubtless the affair at Amboyna, in 1623, in 
which the Dutch and Japanese shed British blood, 



THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND 145 

furnished the pretext. As a rule, when war-makers 
begin their business, ethics is invoked to create 
enthusiasm, and patriotism is fired by appeals to 
other motives, even those as low as the market. 
The Navigation Act of 1651 built a Chinese Wall 
around England. It required that all merchan- 
dise brought into England must be in English 
ships. This was a severe blow struck at Dutch 
commerce, for the Dutch were then the common 
carriers of the world. It was not only the cause 
of the naval wars of the Dutch (1652-74), but 
the chief provocation to the American War of In- 
dependence in 1775. It created also a spirit of 
insolence that remained unbroken until the Amer- 
ican ship-duels of 1812 tamed the British lion's 
pride. 

The untruthful King, Charles II, was an adept 
at deception. He knew the weakness of New 
Netherland, and made ready to swoop upon it. 
In 1664 he hoodwinked the ambassador of the 
Dutch Republic in London as to his true purpose 
of sending the British warships, in time of peace, 
on a buccaneering raid upon New Netherland. He 
did not even keep faith with his brother James, 
the Duke of York, notwithstanding the adage of 
" Honor among: thieves." While the fleet was at 
sea, in order to raise money for his needs, he gave 
away part of New Netherland, " the Jerseys," to 
two of his favorites, Carteret and Berkeley. 
Charles violated the doctrine laid down by Queen 



146 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Elizabeth in her theory of title to new lands, that 
occupation after discovery secures possession. 

New Amsterdam was taken at a time when ut- 
terly defenseless. There were so few men in it, 
that even if it had been well fortified, and powder 
had been plentiful, the defenders would have had 
to stand twenty-two feet apart in order to man 
the line of defense. On board several hundred 
privateers were New Englanders, who had already 
offered their services freely against the Dutch, 
while crowds were flocking near on horse and 
foot ready for loot. The four large royal men-of- 
war, manned with soldiers and marines, landed 
their infantry at Gravesend on August 26, 1664. 
These marched up Long Island, and camped near 
the ferry opposite the little town which lay below 
Wall Street on Manhattanlsland. On September 4 
the frigates, under full sail, moved up and ranged 
themselves opposite the fort. As many as possible 
of the cannon on deck were moved over to one 
side, facing the town, the men "having orders, and 
intending, if any resistance were offered, to fire a 
full broadside into this open place, and so to take 
the city by force, and give up everything to plun- 
der and a blood bath." So wrote Domine Drisius, 
eye-witness at the time. 

Stuyvesant, in spite of his rage as a soldier, was 
overruled by cool-headed men. He had to look 
between the gabions and see the English frigates 
move up the river, and he yielded. One of the 



THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND 147 

greatest glories of England is her generous treat- 
ment of conquered foes. The Dutch secured ex- 
cellent terms of surrender, and there was no loot. 
They were to continue free denizens, to keep their 
private property, and to dispose of it at pleasure. 
Especially were they to enjoy their own customs 
concerning inheritances, which were those of a 
republic, in which all the children received an 
equal share, and not those of a monarchy, in which 
the eldest son obtained the entailed property. As 
yet in New Netherland there was no " aristocratic 
party," such as cursed the land in later times ; 
nor, despite Stuyvesant schemes, were class dis- 
tinctions recognized. In religious matters. Article 
VIII of the capitulation read, " The Dutch shall 
enjoy the liberty of their consciences in Divine 
worship and in Church government." Men of all 
creeds had equal rights. In spite of Stuyvesant of 
mediaeval mind, and of English political Church- 
men who strove to fasten a state church upon 
the province, the Dutch were determined to keep 
religious liberty as sacred as in Holland, and they 
did. They safeguarded free religion until, in 1777, 
the Constitution of New York State permitted 
" the free exercise of religious profession and wor- 
ship without discrimination or preference of all 
mankind." 

The morality of the raid of 1664 is forever 
clear. The revenge of the Dutch came in de Ruy- 
ter's defeat of the English fleet and his foray into 



148 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

the Thames. The Dutch descent upon Chatham 
gave to England her greatest national humilia- 
tion, to be followed a century later by the sur- 
render of two British armies on American soil. 
In less than four generations of unrest under Brit- 
ish rule, the sons of New Netherlanders again 
dwelt under the old striped flag of the Republic 
of the United Netherlands, with the stars of new 
and old statehood, — *' Old Glory " epitomizing 
history and containing prophecy. Of those Dutch 
who refused to live under such government as the 
Stuarts were likely to furnish, hundreds of the 
better sort returned to Patria, or tried new ven- 
tures of life and fortune in the AVest or East 
Indies, or scattered to other colonies. Not a few 
emigrated to Virginia and the Carolinas, where in 
later days we find, besides the names of many able 
men associated with Lord Baltimore and William 
Penn, not a few of eminence, like those of van 
Bibber and van Noppen. Others appear, often in 
greatly altered forms, which shine in the annals of 
war and peace. 



CHAPTER XVI 

LIFE AND AIHUSEMENTS OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 

In coming under English rule the Dutch lost 
much and gained more. One of the first things 
done by the conquerors of New Netherland was to 
sweep away the public schools, which, along with 
their language and religion, the home-makers from 
Patria had brought with them. The idea of gen- 
eral popular education, the very foundation of the 
Dutch Republic, was openly scoffed at by the aris- 
tocratic governors and systematically hindered by 
them. Thus it came to pass that the girls and boys 
in the new province of New York were the first to 
be seriously affected by the change of flags, while 
a heavier responsibility for the education of the 
young was thrown upon the Dutch Church and her 
ministers, "who were henceforth to maintain schools 
conducted in the Dutch vernacular. No doubt at 
first the youngsters enjoyed the freedom from 
school life. 

It is indeed surprising to note how little change 
passed over the daily life of the peopTe because 
of the " English conquest." Outwardly, names 
and forms were altered somewhat, but habits re- 
mained very much as of yore. Happily for the fu- 
ture of the United States, Dutch republican ideas 



150 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

remained. In politics everything was nominally 
Ensflish, but social and church life and democratic 
ideas were Dutch. So far as any immediate bene- 
fit in representative government was concerned, 
the Dutchmen found themselves out of the frying 
pan and into the fire. A royal master across the 
water tried to rule law-loving freemen by " secret 
instructions " through his creatures, only to find 
the people unflinchingly opposed to revolution, 
even when attempted by kings. The Dutchmen 
insisted on representative government, according 
to law. 

If ever young folks lived happy lives and had 
especially good times on extra occasions, the Dutch 
boys and girls in both Old and New Netherland cer- 
tainly did. Holland is the land of Santa Claus and 
dyed Easter eggs. Besides the patron saint's day 
of December 6, there were Christmas, New Year's 
Day, Twelfth Night, Easter, Pinxter, Thanksgiv- 
ing Day, Kermis, and school holidays and feast 
days coming pretty steadily along throughout the 
year. As for toys and games and all kinds of sport, 
the Dutch books and pictures of the seventeenth 
century and the museums and heirlooms in Patria 
show that these were numbered by the score. 
Games with ball, bat, stilts, hoop, top, sling, swing, 
sucker, bow and arrow, sleds and skates, drums 
and trumpets; tennis, golf, cricket, and forty other 
ways of having a good time, besides the easy things 
for girls and the more or less athletic sports for 



LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 151 

boys, are pictured as part of the young people's 
life in the old country, and popular proverbs and 
sayings mirror them in speech. Dutch idioms, tra- 
ditions, and the real life of the old country to-day 
show how parents made life enjoyable for the 
young folks ; and what the Dutch did in Holland 
they continued to do in America. Even the extant 
manuscripts of the Domines' sermons show this, 
for the fun was oftener fast and furious than slow 
and harmless, so that from the pulpit occasionally 
dropped the seasoning of rebuke. Still further, 
one familiar with Dutch survivals in American 
speech, particularly on the playground, and with 
terms not found in the dictionary, recognizes scores 
of words of Netherlands origin. 

Winter sports, especially in favor in the Neth- 
erlands, continue in America. On the network of 
canals in Patria — thousands of shallow trenches, 
ponds, and overflowed meadows — ice formed easily 
and lasted through many weeks. Holland is the 
land of skates and sleighs. Children and young 
people hardly learn to skate ; they begin it natu- 
rally, and keep it up all their lives. Whether for fun 
and in parties, or to go to the market, to church, to 
weddings or funerals, they move by rapid transit 
on steel. A pair of skates is a passport to comrade- 
ship. No need of music or a band ! With rhythm 
in every motion, parties of young folks in every- 
day clothes glide over the ice, motored from within. 
With the ease of winged creatures, they move 



152 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

singly, or holding, a dozen of them, to a pole, and 
keeping time and the poetry of motion as they 
speed on shining metal over the gleaming surface. 
Every habit and each trick known on Holland 
canals or ponds was reproduced on the Mohawk 
and Hudson. 

Then there was the ice-yacht, or sailboat on 
runners, sometimes reduced for swiftness to a long 
plank with cross-pieces for seats and with skate 
irons. Equipped with mast, canvas, and some cord- 
age, it seemed to race with the wind itself. As for 
coasting, wherever flat Holland could show a hill 
or slope, or Friesland furnished a terp or artificial 
mound, there were the boys and girls at fun. On 
the ice, lady or lass sat in a hand sleigh, while 
husband or swain pushed as he skated. All this 
shows the reason why Newburg-on-the-Hudson and 
Albany and the hills of Dorp are so famous for 
coasting, and the North River for ice-yachts, and 
why, from the first generation of settlers, the Dutch- 
American towns were noted for sledding, sleigh- 
ing, and skating. 

When we look at our vocabulary and read of 
" sleigh," " sled," " skate," " ice-yacht," " stove," 
we realize how much we owe the Dutch in the way 
of winter fun and comforts. They brought these 
things with them from their old homes, and put 
them to use at once. At the loan exhibition in 
Schenectady, in 1880, when we celebrated a real 
Kermis, that is, literally, the festival in honor of 



LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 153 

the founding of the churcii and village two cen- 
turies before, nothing was more astonishing than 
the tremendous array of toy3 and implements to 
amuse and tickle the little folks. Papooses and 
Kinder, as was fit in a frontier settlement, played 
together. Here were dolls, hoops, knickers, or 
marbles, skates, masks, toys, and ornaments, home- 
made, or brought from Holland, cake moulds for 
shaping the dough of cookies before baking, and 
things gay for decoration on St. Nicholas' Day and 
at Christmas time. 

Very early in the history, and long after the 
fall of New Netherland, the ice-yacht was a winter 
feature up and down the Hudson and Mohawk 
rivers, just as soon as Jack Frost had furnished a 
floor more level than the humpy and sculptured 
stone pavements of the big churches in Patria. 
Not all of the boys and girls might afford iron- 
runnered skates, or could wait to buy or get them 
from Europe. What odds ? They were bound to 
" ride " on skates, as the Dutch say. Ox bones, 
being plentiful, were quickly chopped or filed flat 
and then strapped or tied on. It was common to 
see bands of red-cheeked boys and girls skating 
together or in " wings," circling round. If ice had 
formed by Santa Claus' Day, then December 6 
was a carnival on skates, and the Binne Kill at 
Schenectady, the Collect (bad English for the 
vulgar Dutch Kalk, pronounced Kallek) on Man- 
hattan, and the Hudson at Albany, made scenes 



154 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

of color, life, fun, and sport that could not be 
beaten in all the colonies. They were fond of 
skates with tremendojisly protruding irons, which 
at the front ends curled up into big circles. On 
these, long and strong, scores of miles were easily 
covered. Sometimes men skated all the way from 
Fort Orange to Manhattan. 

Thanksgiving Day, usually in October, which 
was ancient and common in Patria long before 
it was heard of in America, continued in New 
Netherland, and gave a sort of closure on summer 
sports. Then the programme of stalwart, outdoor 
activities and winter joys opened in earnest. After 
Santa Glaus' Day, December 6, preparations for 
Christmas and its feastings began. If gilded and 
frosted gingerbread made into figures of the good 
saints, warriors, horses, wagons, and other odd 
shapes, and Deventer cookies, rich in every sort of 
spice and fruit, abounded for the children on the 
saint's day, the oven turned out even a more won- 
derful store of goodies for both old and young at 
Christmas time. Poems, recitations, and songs 
were part of the programme, and the social joys 
were apt to last several days. 

Greatest of all days in the Dutch calendar was 
New Year's. Greetings, gifts, visits, were the 
order of daylight, while fun, frolic, the dance, 
refreshments, and sleigh rides made the rule of 
the night. Before big hearths and roaring wood- 
fires, the hero tales and wonder stories of the Fa- 



LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 155 

therland made long and joyous evenings after the 
short winter days. The Dutch retired early. For 
the little folks, trundle beds ^ere rolled in and 
out from under the higher bedsteads of the elders. 
All slept under wool and feathers in houses which, 
whether log, board, stone, or brick, kept no fires 
burning at night, unless it were a live coal or 
two smothered in ashes. For those whose evening 
courtship was to be done, bundling, or covering 
with quilts or blankets, was the rule along the 
whole Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia to Georgia, 
and New Netherland made no exception. 

The winter was the busy school time, and Sun- 
day had also a long double hour of sitting, which 
tried the patience and good manners of the young 
folks. 

Many are the local traditions of misunderstand- 
ings between the small boy and his mentors, — the 
Domine, sexton, schoolmaster, pasture-keeper, and 
magistrate. We must not take too seriously some 
of these legends, nor imagine that young folks did 
not have as good a time in those days, or that they 
inherited a larger measure of total depravity than 
do we in these later days. If we have any sense of 
humor and the least imagination, we can see how 
different were the points of view of sedate adults 
and lively youngsters then as well as now. For 
example, in filling up an old well long disused and 
not far from the wall-line of the fourth church 
edifice in Schenectady, torn down to make room 



156 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

for a new, larger fifth building, the skeletons 
of two boys were found at the bottom. Now it 
does not follow, despite local legend, that they 
had suffered a fate similar to that of the Princes 
in the Tower at the hands of an irate sexton, be- 
cause of juvenile bad behavior in church. Never- 
theless, tradition avers that boys on the backless 
seats of pine were not always as quiet as the mice 
of the proverb. It is alleged that the cherub-faced 
girls whispered and even flirted, while the Domine 
preached, and that ever and anon pebbles and 
marbles, instead of coins, were found in the velvet 
collection bags of the deacons. 

All evidences go to show that the girls had a 
good time. They were kept so busy with household 
duties and accomplishments — then so much more 
numerous than in our day of patents, machinery, 
and factories — that they entered into merrymak- 
ing with a vim equal to that shown by the boys. 
In winter, the morning might be given to putting 
the house in order and furnishing the larder from 
dairy and kitchen, for the unfathomable appetites 
of the men and lads. But Penelope's afternoons 
were spent at the distaff or spinning-wheel, or 
with sewing-basket or darning needles. In the 
evenings there were social joys, guessing games, 
and trials of chance. The ever present refresh- 
ments came at the proper moment of vacuity and 
full appreciation. Kissing games were much more 
common than now. In spring, when "good sap- 



LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 157 

weather," of alternate sunshine by day and freez- 
ing by night, turned the maple trees into saccha- 
rine fountains, " sugaring-oif " was the evening 
joy of the Mohawk Valley, the hot sap being 
boiled down and run on snow, of which each of 
the young folks had a pan easily refilled. 

When the season of flowers opened, no people 
more than the Dutch kept tally of the floral calendar 
of leaf, color, and perfume of " the angels of the 
grass." For each of the great Church and Chris- 
tian festivals there was a special flower with its 
sentiment and meaning. Gladly did they wel- 
come the hepatica as the Paschal bloom. When the 
passion flower came from the tropics, the wistaria 
from Japan, and the white daisy from England, 
the old friends and new acquaintances dwelt to- 
gether in the same gardens. From Haarlem, the 
floral capital of the world, and Leyden, the home 
city of learning in Patria, novelties were imported 
frequently to give variety either to the stiff, formal 
gardens borrowed from and so fashionable in Eu- 
rope, or to the dooryards in which individual taste 
ruled. 

Back of the tremendous commercial activities 
of the fur-trade, as seen in bales, heaps, and 
counters, in warehouses and on ships, was the 
wonder world of live animals. The forest, with its 
mystery, was ever a lure. Most boys and girls had 
their live pets from the woods, caught in traps or 
captured after the parents of the young animals 



158 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

had become meat and fur. Hill, glen, meadow, and 
brooksides meant enterprise and activity for the 
lad. Even the little boy had his blunt arrows, and 
l^lajdng with Indians of like age, he was able to 
rival them, and bring down real birds, to trap the 
smaller animals, and to bring home many a string 
of fish for dinner. When old enough to be trusted 
with guns, the boys went out into the forest for veni- 
son. As for rabbits, wild pigeons, and smaller game, 
they were innumerable. Young Jacobus van Cur- 
ler, out shooting with van Twiller, boasted that 
he had killed over a hundred blackbirds at one 
shot. In April wild pigeons flew in such masses 
that the sun's light was lessened, and so low that 
they could be knocked down with clubs. 

In Schenectady, when only a few canoes drawn 
up on the riverbank and a parallelogram of stakes 
in the pine forests scarcely made the creatures 
in fur and feather suspicious of danger, wild tur- 
keys and deer, coming from the hills to drink, 
were sometimes killed within the palisades. Ducks 
were shot along Cow Horn Creek, and in the 
marshes near the town, down to the end of the 
eighteenth century. Indeed, I can remember when, 
as late as 1881, notwithstanding railways and 
civilization, a wild stag from the Adirondacks, 
having lost its way, fled across the frozen Mohawk 
River, and rushed into the streets of Schenectady. 
Chased by dogs, it got its antlers tangled up in 
the iron fence of St. George's Churchyard. Yet 



LIFE OF THE YOUNG FOLKS 159 

not easily was its freedom lost ! It demolished ut- 
terly with its hoofs the clothes of a strong man 
who thought to capture it alive and quickly. 

One pleasant feature of frontier life, despite its 
roughness, was the close mutual acquaintance of 
all domestic animals, four-footed and human. As 
even to-day, one in a city can tell, by their feelings 
of fear or trust in a horse, for example, the children 
born and bred in the country and those who have 
lived between brick walls, so even in New Nether- 
land the sports of town and country differed, and 
human beings lived nearer nature in village and 
country than in the towns. Kid ni mo inaka (even 
in the metropolis there are boors) and Kid sumeru 
(where you live, that is the capital) might be 
Dutch as well as Japanese proverbs, for there 
was culture on the frontier and rudeness on Man- 
hattan. 



CHAPTER XVII 
SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 

In no country of Europe was human existence 
more intensely social than the Netherlands, where 
the climate and soil compelled people to live much 
indoors. A thousand contrivances, designed to 
make sedentary life enjoyable, were in use, while 
art bloomed as in a garden. The Dutchman's fire- 
side was famous for comforts unknown in sun- 
nier lands, and his house, a true home, was a 
museum of delights. The tell-tale etymology of 
most of our homely words, descriptive of textiles, 
costumes, house furnishings and equipment, betray 
their Dutch origin. Our underclothing, beds, fur- 
niture, kitchen belongings, and parlor necessities, 
from the " stovey," to warm our feet, to the easel, 
or little donkey, to hold our pictures, recall in 
their names the country of their origin. 

Man makes a camp, but woman the home. In 
Holland the whole system of school training, from 
Finsterwolde to Flushing and from Scheveningen 
to Winterswijk, was built on the idea of the equal 
but not identical education for both sexes. Mutual 
helpfulness between man and woman was expected 
on the farm and in the shop. The girls went to the 
public schools along with the boys, and all alike 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 161 

to the age of twelve. After that, the burghers and 
well-to-do people made their daughters study to 
be thoroughly practical in home and business. 
Economy, administration, the keeping of accounts, 
and the management of farm, garden, dairy, shop, 
and household were according to rigid training. 
Success was the prize of ambition. Legitimate 
rivalry was encouraged and cultivated. A young 
woman was led to find her enjoyment in preparing 
herself to be not only a good wife and mother, but 
a wise conserver of her husband's property and 
fortune. The popular art, proverbs, and literature 
illustrate this, but matter-of-fact local records illu- 
minate it. 

All Dutch history shows how nobly the women 
were helpmates of the men in managing those hos- 
pitals, orphanages, and retreats for aged couples, 
and homes for old men and women, which made 
the glory of Holland. Women as weU as men won 
the independence of the Fatherland. Compelled 
during their eighty years of struggle for freedom 
to provide for thousands of widows, orphans, crip- 
ples, wounded soldiers, and victims of the Inquisi- 
tion, the Dutch people in their little country de- 
veloped a vast and minute system of charity, the 
like of which was not to be found in Europe, and 
which is as yet unexcelled. In no lands were the 
laws more favorable to women. Such development 
had its roots far back in the Middle Ages. 

To New Netherland the woman brought her in- 



162 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

heritecl habit and her strict training : first, to make 
of temporary quarters — the straw shack, the bark 
house, or the hut of boards — a home, and then, to 
transform it into a dwelling rich in comforts. Un- 
ceasing industry, thrift, and hatred of waste, as of 
dirt and laziness, enabled the settler in a year of 
good harvests to begin wealth, or in poor times to 
bear bravely enforced poverty. Or, if at Wiltwijk, 
Schenectady, or on Staten Island, the savages laid 
the settlement in ashes reddened with blood, no- 
thing exhibits Dutch pluck and endurance better 
than the return again of the desolate to cast their 
seed into the ground and rebuild their homes. In 
no case did savagery ultimately triumph. 

The Dutch never took kindly to the axe or the 
log cabin. In succession to their first creditable 
houses of bark, after the Iroquois model, they had 
frame houses of sawn timber, for they very early 
set up sawmills. But the typical house in New 
Netherland consisted of two brick walls, gabled 
and crow-stepped, with the intervening space of 
timber. Thus they combined the solidity of stone 
with the interior dryness of the wooden dwelling. 

After the first frontier novelties of experience 
were over, the Dutch shack, dugout, or wooden 
house was rebuilt of stone or brick. Besides early 
baking their own clay into stone (haksteen), much 
brick, and probably most of the glazed tiles and 
material for wall chequering, was brought from 
Holland as ship's ballast. Thus in the majority 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 163 

of cases the front and rear walls, or gabled ends, 
were of mineral material, the whole intervening 
space except the chimney being of wood, and often 
strengthened with iron rods. One of the gables 
faced the street, and the other the garden, with a 
stoop, or porch, at each end, the front one having 
seats and railings. When such a house got too old, 
it was common, as I have often seen, "to tear out 
everything but the frame," and, between the old 
thick gable ends of brick or stone, to rebuild with 
modern timber, in new interior arrangements. 

The door was divided crosswise into two parts, 
upper and lower, the former to let in air and light, 
and the latter to keep out the pigs, chickens, and 
marauders of all sorts. The Dutch bisected door 
goes back to feudal days, when every comer might 
be challenged before being given entrance. Of 
similar warlike origin was the projecting second 
story, which, overlapping by its extension the 
doorway beneath, allowed the defender above to 
guard against attack by fire or weapon. In many 
old Dutch houses in the Mohawk and Hudson val- 
leys this feature served admirably against hostile 
Indians. In the later frame dwelling, ancient his- 
tory and survival are suggested by a conventional 
moulding which reveals the projection of a few 
inches only. The bricks, near the gables, wrought 
in the form of crow-steps, or top-pieces serving as 
chimneys, were laid in curious triangular or cheq- 
uered patterns, just as one sees in Friesland to- 



164 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

day. Indeed, the keen-eyed visitor to Holland can 
recognize the original model and features of many 
an old house in Kingston and Schenectady. The 
ancestral traits reappear in the domestic archi- 
tecture of the New World as infallibly as the noses, 
mouths, eyes, and hair common to the grandpar- 
ents, parents, and grandchildren in the same 
towns. 

At one point there was a notable departure 
from the model in Patria, and that was in the 
windows, which on Manhattan and in old Dorp, 
for example, were small. In Holland, even though 
the panes of glass be very small and the house 
fronts narrow, the window spaces are and were 
large. This is because in Holland windows have 
from mediaeval times been taxed by number. Much 
of the war revenue was thus raised. In New Neth- 
erland no such reason existed permanently, and a 
sash of many panes, being cheaper and less liable 
to break, was used. Thus the house lights were 
modest in size as compared with the large windows 
in Patria. 

On the outside, fastened into the bricks, were 
"ankers," or iron clamps, hammered into figures 
showing dates. If it were possible to have a 
weather-vane, cock, arrow, monogram, family crest, 
or arms on the gable top, it was sure to be there. 
The blacksmith, or anchor-smith, was an impor- 
tant person in the New Netherland village. He 
was usually an artist, more or less ambitious, for 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 165 

he made floriated patterns of hinges or braces that 
might branch out over most of the area of the upper 
or lower leaf of the door. He enjoyed pounding out 
colossal figures, 1, 6, or 7, and other digital numer- 
als, for the ornamentation of the house front. He 
was probably also the maker of the big church door- 
lock. On his anvil he beat out the key, brazing 
on the bit or web, rounding on his anvil's beak a 
bow and forging it to the shank, and filing out the 
wards. He also was responsible for the church 
weather-vane, which in frontier days, instead of 
stamped gilded metal, representing a cock, lamb, 
beaver, or other emblem of doctrine or virtue, was 
usually cut or punched out of sheet iron. 

The anchor-smith followed mason and carpenter 
in the building of a house. He equipped the fire- 
place with a cast-iron jamb, andirons, and the 
great swinging pot-holder with chain and hangers. 
Often the iron jamb or back was a casting con- 
taining dates, emblems, mottoes, scriptural or other 
quotations, proverbs, or poems. Only in late days, 
when the Dutchmen learned from the Japanese to 
make Delft ware, and applied their knowledge to 
tiles, were those miniature Bible panoramas set 
up to adorn the front and sides, creating a fash- 
ion which was borrowed by the New Engianders. 
Delft tiles served as the picture galleries at which 
our American painters, Trumbull, Allston, Van- 
derlyn, and others, received their first impressions 
and stimulus to art. Often these tiles had on them 



166 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

mere outlines of biblical events, with numbers 
showing the text which one must look up in order 
to understand the pictorial illusion. On others the 
designs were suggestions rather than pictures, mere 
" lesson helps." 

The fireplace was literally the focus of the house 
and the home. It was big enough usually to ac- 
commodate the whole family, should they want all 
at once to get inside to look up its black throat, 
to see whether Sai^ta Claus or Kris Kringle were 
coming. Inside its length, up and down, were 
usually steps or projections on which the chimney 
sweep or cleaner, usually a boy not too fat, could 
steady his feet while brushing or scraping off the 
soot or the stalactites of pine tar. Hickory was the 
best fuel, however, and kept the chimney neater. 
The inner hearth was most often of brick, but the 
broad outer hearthstone consisted frequently of 
one slab of noble length and width. The back log, 
gloried in and celebrated in song and proverb, was 
so huge that in many cases the house was pur- 
posely built against the side of a hill, in order that 
the kitchen door might be level with the ground. 
A heavy section of tree trunk, sawed to the right 
length, was hauled in by a horse, rolled and set 
as the background of the fire, while corncobs, 
brush, and fagots blazed in front. 

Here, after the serious work of preparing the food 
was over, the family sat for rest, worship, chat and 
gossip, jokes and merriment, and no people were 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 167 

wittier, brighter, or more full of fun than the 
Dutch. In winter the long evenings were given up 
to stories, finger games, with lullaby for baby and 
pipe for papa, and then, at the right time, cider, 
apples, nuts, and refreshments as desired. For the 
real old folks the hearth was the place of memory, 
but for the young it was the seed-bed of dreams. 
In the darting tongues of the blaze and the deep 
glow of the embers lad and lassie saw the castles 
of the future, and the aged pictures of the past. 

Carpets and matting were, for the most part, un- 
known. Instead of these hiders of dirt and holders 
of germs, the floor was scrubbed until it shone, 
and then sprinkled with white sand, which was made 
into fanciful patterns with the end of a broomstick, 
a custom which one sees in the back country in 
Holland to-day. Such a floor dressing, swept off 
and renewed every week, made life for the vermin 
so disagreeable that they kept out and away. In 
the homes of the well-to-do rugs were common. 
/ The "threshold covenant" was an ancient and 
serious thing with the Dutch. In other words, the 
front door was opened only on great occasions of 
joy, or when a bride or a corpse was to cross the 
line dividing outdoors from indoors. For every-day 
use, and for everybody in general, the kitchen door 
was the proper entrance. Often the hallway was 
from front to rear, the sitting-room being at the 
back and the parlor in front. In small houses, num- 
bering fewer apartments than the fiugers on one 



168 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

hand, the bedrooms were in the wall, or were like 
cupboards, shut up during the day and opened at 
night, and climbed up and into by means of a short 
step-ladder. In a word, just as one still sees in the 
old homeland to-day, and recognizes on the can- 
vases, from Ostade to Israels, so, within my re- 
membrance, were the interiors in Dutch America. 
To the Domine of the congregation it was the 
matron's pride to show all, from cellar to attic, 
with the wondrous store of house-linen and table 
equipment. 

The beds were made of hay or straw, corn leaves 
or silk moss, hair or feathers, sewed into " tick- 
ing," — which is an English word of Dutch origin. 
Sassafras wood was at first much in demand for 
supposed protection from unwelcome bed mates, 
securing, it was believed, to each person the ex- 
clusive use of his own cuticle. As civilization 
advanced, the bunk, or box lined with dry leaves, 
spruce boughs, or pine needles gave way to the 
four-poster bed, and in later times favorite im- 
ported woods were in fashion. Long after Manhat- 
tan was swapped off for Surinam, with its forests 
of mahogany, this timber became plentiful and in 
fashion for furniture. To take the chill off the 
pure linen sheets, long-handled brass bed-warmers 
were used. Polished until their basins shone like 
gold, these hung on the walls by day as part of the 
decoration of the room, to become hand-stoves at 
night. Except what one's own caloric and the thick 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 169 

folds of quilt, blanket, or comfortable furnished, 
the bed- warmer was usually the only source of heat 
allowed in the sleeping-chamber, though later lux- 
ury allowed wood stoves. As a rule, all the family, 
the parents up in the heights of piled feather beds 
or mattresses, and children in the trundle beds be- 
neath, slept in pure cold air, for the great open 
chimney was a capital ventilator. " When hearts 
are light and life is new," slumber after prayers 
was usually too sudden and too sound to know 
much of the variations of the thermometer. The 
Dutchmen took sleep as a serious thing, enjoyed 
plenty of it, and believed in it as one of life's best 
blessings. How beautiful is the evening prayer in 
the liturgy of the Dutch Church, — " Temper our 
sleep that it be not disorderly, that we remain 
spotless both in body and soul, nay, that our sleep 
itself may be to Thy glory." 

Marriage, which begins the family, was the / 
greatest event in a Dutch home. The New Nether- 
landers believed in a big company and well-loaded 
tables, to which all within the circle of their 
acquaintance, albeit well graded, were invited; 
though on this one occasion, rich and poor, if 
blood relatives, met on a common basis. Usually 
the black slaves or servants were allowed the privi- 
lege of seeing the ceremony. The Domine, in his 
gown and bands, was never happier than at this 
binding of hearts for the making of a home, and 
for the enlargement of all sweet human relation- 



170 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ships and influences. The marriage ritual of the 
Dutch, like the national art, is as full of realism 
as is a canvas of Eembrandt or Jan Steen. It starts 
out, as does its catechism, with the idea of comfort 
and consolation. It faces the fact that the nuptial 
bond doubles at once both joys and sorrows. It 
relates the Genesis story of Eden, with its ocean- 
deep, poetic truth, and it recalls the Gospel narra- 
tive of Cana in Galilee, promising also divine aid 
and protection. The Almighty Father himself 
gave Eve to Adam to be his wife, "witnessing 
thereby that He doth yet, as with his hand, bring 
unto every man his wife." In biblical phrase, the 
groom was told to lead, instruct, comfort, protect, 
and love his wife and maintain his "household 
honestly and likewise have something to give to 
the poor." The bride was warned against exercis- 
ing dominion over the husband. Then the vital 
questions were asked, responses made, and the 
benison bestowed. It was the usual custom at wed- 
dings to take up a collection for the benefit of the 
poor. 

Whatever else was absent, flowers of the gayest 
hue were in evidence, and decorations were plenti- 
ful. The crowning joys for the guests were at the 
table, with eatables and drinkables got ready days 
in advance. There were no wedding journeys in 
colonial days, and sometimes the practical joke§ 
played on bride and groom by the lower classes 
were rough and uncanny, there being even less 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 171 

opportunity to escape tormentors than young folks 
have in our day. 

When the windows of heaven opened and the 
cradle rocked with new treasures, or, in paternal 
phrase, the couple was "visited" from heaven, 
christening and public name-giving usually took 
place in the church within a few days, and often 
on the following Sunday if the mother was able 
to be present. Brave were the women then, and 
small families were rare. Many a Dutch proverb 
tells how safe, how healthful, and how blessed is 
normal humanity that shirks no pain or care, and 
how good is the "love that lightens all distress" 
for womankind. As artificial foods were next to 
unknown, mothers fed their offspring from nature's 
pure fountains, and the babies thrived on the real 
nourishment, which no machinery or substitute for 
mother's milk can give. The solemn ritual of the 
Church transfigured even common life, and spread 
a halo over the cradle. 

Nine tenths of all the girls' names, and most of 
the boys', ended in ie, a tender and affectionate di- 
minutive, which in English has become y, Gertje, 
Grietje, Annetje, Elsje — that is, Gertrude, or 
Gertie, Margaret or Maggie, Ann or Annie, and 
Alice or Elsie — were usually among their own 
near kindred so addressed or referred to even to 
the end of their days. The boys dropped their pend- 
ants earlier. Family names were not in universal 
use in Europe until after the Reformation. Then 



J 



172 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

and thereafter, as the Bible became, in Northern 
Europe, not only a household book, but an encyclo- 
paedia, girls received other names besides Mary 
and Elizabeth, and boys' names, besides those given 
in christening, John, Peter, and Paul, were known. 
Dutch sons added 8 or se, sen or %oon^ to their 
father's baptismal name to show that they were. 
Johnson, Williamson, Wilkins, etc., that is, the 
son of John or William, or little William. Hence 
we have Janse Petersen, etc. For family cognomens 
they adjoined the names of their trade or occupa- 
tion, as in Dirck de Bakker, that is, Theodore the 
baker ; or (if a potter or baker of clay marbles) 
" Knicker bocker " ; or the place whence they 
came. Demeans "the," and v«?i signifies "from." 
Hence the frequency of these prefixes. The dam, 
the dike, field, morass, sand, wharf, city, town, 
village, or church, reappear in names, such as 
van Dam, van Dyke, van Antwerp, etc., just as 
on the business signs of some returned Dutchmen 
in Holland, one may read Jan van America, 
Hendrijk van Chicago, etc. The prefix van should, 
almost invariably, be written with a small v ; for 
in very few cases among the seventeenth-century 
emigrants did van mean anything else thanyrom. 
It was rarely a real part of the family name. 

The Bible in the superb and scholarly States- 
General version, ordered in 1619, was more than 
a daily book, in use at family worship, for general 
reading and hunting up the proof -texts wherewith 




x^ 



February 
May 
August 
November 




" A POEM IX TWELVE CAXTOS. THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR 

(In First Keforined Church. Schenectady The Banker Screen) 



SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW NETHERLAND 173 

to fortify the catechism, which every child of de- 
cent parents was supposed to know, and usually 
did know — for better or worse. It was also a 
story-book, a mine for " Sunday amusements," such 
as puzzles and conundrums, an encyclopaedia of 
general knowledge, and the sacred repository of 
family records and traditions. What we call 
" family Bibles," for pulpit or desk use, were car- 
ried to church usually by a big black slave ; but 
in the ships, the Domine's or Church copy came 
over as freight rather than as personal baggage, 
so huge and heavy were these illustrated Bibles. 

Domine Bogardus's Bible was older than the 
"revised version" of the States-General. Dated 
1543 and handsomely printed, it is a massive 
volume a foot and a half long, one foot wide, 
and half a foot thick. Its covers are half an inch 
in thickness, and are bound on the corners with 
heavy brass mountings ornamented. One can un- 
derstand why a book is said to be bound in 
" boards," which now means pasteboard, but for- 
merly was real timber. Of the hundreds of Dutch 
Bibles I have examined, apart from their valuable 
historical entries, the striking feature in many of 
the larger editions is the excellence of the wood- 
cuts and the clearness of the maps, these latter 
showing America — with its northwest coast as 
yet unknown — and some the mythical " Ver- 
razano's Sea." The hooded and rosy-cheeked 
maidens wore in chatelaine fashion their Bibles 



174 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

at their girdles, held by silver chain and waist 
hood, or sheathed in velvet or silk bags. 

It was around the Church and the Bible that 
the best life in New Netherland centred, and from 
these sources it was nourished. 

Social morality in New Netherland was of a 
high standard. Divorces were unknown. The 
opinion is practically unanimous among those who 
have studied the local records and Church disci- 
pline in American colonial days, that no colonies, 
Puritan or Cavalier, North or South, excelled, 
even if they equaled, in morality the Continental 
settlers, Walloon, Dutch, and Huguenot, who be- 
gan the Middle States of the American Union. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLIVIASTERS 

The Dutch came to America from a country 
in whicli printing was free and books were cheap. 
Public schools, for all children to the age of 
twelve, sustained by taxation and giving free ele- 
mentary instruction, had existed in most of the 
towns from the Middle Ages. There was, besides 
these, a large number of Church schools, in which 
/ the young people of the upper classes received in- 
struction in Latin and the humanities. Long be- 
fore England enjoyed the " liberty of unlicensed 
printing," for which Milton made seraphic plea, 
printers in the Netherlands were busy in free 
competition, and books were as common as bread 
and cheese. One of the chief elements of success 
in the Eighty Years' War against Spain, as later 
in the case of Japan and Russia, was the power 
of general popular education. 

Among the first and very definite provisions 
made, when the West India Company was formed, 
were those for ministers and schoolmasters, both 
of whom were required to show certificates before 
they received their appointment. The Domines 
must be university graduates, as a rule, though 
the instructors need not necessarily be such, but 



176 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

in both cases they must be educated gentlemen. 
Michaelius's letter of 1628, long preserved among 
the dusty papers of a civil court of Amsterdam, 
not only pictures the first Communion Sunday in 
New Amsterdam, but gives his ideas of the true 
philosophy of education, — that is, to begin early 
with the children. On Manhattan, public school 
education was only five years later than Church 
life. New Netherland was the only one of the 
colonies in which elementary instruction for the 
youth of both sexes was maintained out of the 
public moneys. 

Michaelius was also a teacher on week days. 
He began with the catechism. The Domine's 
good work of training the savage cliildren was in- 
terfered with through one redeeming trait of In- 
dian character, their fondness for their offspring. 
"Time and again the little heathen, when just 
about emerging into light, are carried off by the 
parents, to be swallowed up again in the darkness 
of paganism," wrote this observer and philosopher. 

The schoolmasters of the future Empire State, 
beginning with Adam Roelandsen, crossed the 
ocean with all the glow of pioneers to begin their 
work, which was primarily among the white chil- 
dren of their own countrymen, though the pas- 
tors also taught not a few of the papooses. These 
schoolmasters came with their certificates. They 
have left their names on the landscape, as well as 
in the records, and their history is in the main 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 177 

highly creditable. From modern writers, who seek 
out the odd and curious, the incompetent and dis- 
reputable pedagogues have attracted much notice. 
The steady work of the good men, done without 
the noise of trumpets, is left unnoticed. The school 
which Roelandsen began on Manhattan in 1633 
continued with varying success, and was main- 
tained at the public expense, until the downfall 
of New Netherland in 1664. The English rulers 
cared little or nothing about public elementary 
instruction supported by taxation, and they swept 
away the Dutch public schools. Then the Dutch 
school on Manhattan was taken over by the 
Church, and has ever since been maintained in 
unbroken continuity. It is still in flourishing 
prosperity and situated in a fine building, where 
I have more than once visited it. A " History of 
the Collegiate Church School" has been published. 
When, in 1800, Rev. William Linn, pastor of the 
Dutch Church and regent of the University of the 
State of New York, preached his " gleaming ser- 
mon," as it was called, the response from the peo- 
ple in a collection was eleven hundred dollars, an 
amount at that time considered wonderful. 

No special schoolhouses are known to have been 
built in the very early years of New Netherland. 
The schoolroom was attached to the church, or was 
in the edifice itself. On Manhattan it was in the 
City Hall. 

Johannes Backerus, of Barcinger, Hoorn, may 



y 



178 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

serve as one of many examples of the Dutch desire 
for learned ministers and teachers and the strict- 
ness of examination for certificates. He was intro- 
duced by letter from Domine Megapolensis, then 
minister at Koedijk, or the Cow Dike, as one will- 
ing to go out to the East Indies as Comforter of 
the sick. Not having a regular education, the 
young man's application was declined, and not 
until after three years of hard study and several 
trials and examinations was he ordained, October 
16, 1642, — all of which shows how careful the 
Dutch authorities were to have learned and ac- 
ceptable ministers, as well as schoolmasters. After 
signing a contract for four years with the Com- 
pany, Backerus proceeded to Cura^oa, becoming 
acquainted there with Peter Stuyvesant. Later 
he accompained the new governor to Manhattan. 
Here he found one hundred and seventy members 
of the Church, and John Stevenson, who had been 
teaching school for seven years. Backerus did not 
wholly approve of Stuyvesant, and after two years' 
work as pedagogue he sailed from New Amster- 
dam, August 15, 1649, with charges against the 
governor. 

In 1647, when Stuyvesant tried to mix together 
taxation for school support and for military pur- 
poses, he found the Dutchmen against him. " Let 
John Company attend to his own proper business, 
and repair the fort, while we, gladly doing what 
we and our fathers had done for centuries, will 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 179 

pay the taxes to support the public schools," was 
the gist of their answer. The upshot of the discus- 
sion was that the Nine Men promptly agreed to 
reorganize the school, finish the church edifice, 
and cheerfully lay a school and Church tax upon 
themselves, but they demanded that the Company 
should repair the fort. 

In 1649, the Nine Men complained, and di- 
rected that there should be two good masters in the 
public schools. "As it is now, the school is kept 
very irregularly ; one and another keeping it ac- 
cording to his pleasure and as long as he thinks 
proper." Stuyvesant, writing to the Classis of 
Amsterdam, seconded the request most earnestly. 
On January 10, 1650, the Classis sent out William 
Vestens, " a good, Godfearing man," as Comforter 
of the sick and schoolmaster on Manhattan. He 
taught for five years. Later Jan, or Johannes, de la 
Montague taught in the Herberg, or City Hall, at 
a salary worth in our day one thousand dollars. 

Various other names of Dutch schoolmasters, 
clerical or lay, are known of those who served on 
Long Island and in New Jersey and Delaware, 
some very creditably, those doing the best work 
being least heard from or noticed by later writers. 
Among those whose records are known were Everts 
Petersen, Gideon Schaats, Jacobus van Curler, 
Alexander Curtius, Godfrey Dellius, and Bernar- 
dus Freeman, who taught the children, white and 
red. Some of the scholarly men have left literary 



180 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

memorials in prose and verse, as seen in the Hon. 
Henry C. Murphy's " Anthology of New Nether- 
land." 

Many of the Dutch Domines were men of science 
also. Hence neither the weeds of narrow intoler- 
ance, nor such a deadly night-shade of superstition 
as belief in witchcraft, could easily grow up among 
the Dutch Christians, who were, for the most part, 
liberal-minded Bible readers. Rev. Peter Week- 
sten, a graduate of Leyden University, before 
preaching at Kingston, from 1681 to 1687, had 
been Latin master at Haarlem. Eev. John Peter 
Nucella, who served the Church at Kingston from 
1689 to 1704, was active in public education until 
he was appointed by Queen Anne to take charge 
of the Dutch Royal Chapel of St. James in Loudon. 
These instances serve as examples of more, whom 
we cannot mention for lack of space. 

In general, it may be said that every town and 
village community was fairly well served by Dutch 
preachers after the English conquest, for wher- 
ever there was a church there was a precentor or 
voorlezer, who acted also as pedagogue. Scores of 
autographs of these men are extant on the church 
records. Quite often the day-school teacher was 
unduly ambitious and sought to climb into the 
pulpit. 

Yet though the accepted Domine might be a 
schoolmaster, the converse was not true of the 
pedagogue. No wielder of the Map could enter the 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 181 

pulpit unless duly licensed and ordained. Some 
of them did thus enter, but others were kept out 
by the hedges of severe examinations. Neverthe- 
less, startling stories are told of one or two who, 
by trickery or collusion with the dupes of the 
British governors, got in, and to the grief of the 
orthodox, added to the gayety of the ungodly. 
One such, after a career of marrying, christening, 
baptizing, and preaching which lined his pockets, 
was found out and exposed, and he fled the country 
in 1715. At this date, his name is usually spoken 
only with an uncomplimentary smile. 

It must be remembered that the school record 
and educational activities of the Dutch in New 
York did not end with the one generation, or 
thirty-three years, between Adam Roelandsen and 
the English conquest of 1664, but stretched for 
the most part until 1800. From the first the New 
Netherlanders were not originating anything, but 
merely transplanting the institutions of Patria. 
Hence the instruction was not, as at first in 
Massachusetts, for boys only, based chiefly on 
Latin, and mainly as preparation for the ministry 
of the Church, but was for girls as well as boys. 
New England's first school was a college, the second 
was a Latin school, and the next schools were 
simply feeders for the college. Not until Andros's 
time were there schools for elementary training. 
The chief idea of education was to maintain a 
learned clergy. The New England girls were not 



182 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

given free public education until the colonial era 
was over. 

In New Netherland elementary education for all 
children, without regard to class, sex, or social 
condition, was from the first a matter of public 
concern and support. As against this, after 1664, 
was the English idea of schools for the nobles, the 
clergy, and " sons of quality." The royal governors 
of New York province would approve only of 
Latin schools. England had "Board" or public 
schools with elementary instruction for all only 
within the memory of men now living. In Holland 
mediaeval records tell how general was popular 
education. 

New York has the honor of founding the first 
free public elementary school within the limits 
of the United States. The Dutch policy of state 
supervision of schools, without the interference 
of a state church, — which latter, neither New 
Netherland nor New York, as province or State, 
as a whole, ever had on her soil, — showed but 
orderly evolution when the University of the State 
of New York was formed. With this institution, 
the name of Alexander Hamilton is justly asso- 
ciated. It now guards, in beautiful order, the 
educational interests of eight millions of people, 
without dictation of Church, sect, priest, or parson. 
" The first organized government in the world to 
enshrine in her fundamental law the sacred pledge 
of absolute spiritual independence and of politi- 



SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS 183 

cal action without ecclesiastical intervention " was 
that of the State of New York. 

Besides having the oldest school in the United 
States, still in daily operation, the Dutch of New 
Netherland organized and maintained academies 
and colleges in the Raritan, Hudson, and Mohawk 
valleys, most of which have been in continuous 
existence to the present time. Modern immigrants 
from Holland in the West show the same love 
for education. The American Netherlanders were 
from the first the peers of the "Yankees" in a 
desire for a learned ministry, public schools, 
general popular education, and home culture, while 
they excelled the New Englanders in their regard 
for science and in freedom from superstition. They 
fell behind, in later days, because they persisted 
too long in the use of what, after 1700, was vir- 
tually a foreign language, while cut off from vital 
contact with the culture which Patria had given. 
If in the systematizing and state supervision of 
public education New York has led all the states 
of the Union, the reason for this lies in the previous 
preparation and character of the cosmopolitan peo- 
ple, and especially of those who came from " the 
land where conscience was free," — the original 
home of the free, public, elementary school system. 

The limits of our little book do not allow notice 
of " the intellectuals " of New Netherland and of 
their literary productions, which when examined, 
as in Corwin's Manual, are found to be notable in 



184 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

product and respectable in quality. Steendam, 
Selyns, and de Sille were the poets, and their verses 
have been collected in Henry C. Murphy's " An- 
thology of New Netherland." Thus writes Steen- 
dam in 1661: — 

New Netherland, thou noblest spot of earth, 
Where bounteous Heaven ever poureth forth 
The fulness of His gifts, of greatest worth, 
Mankind to nourish. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SUNDAYS IN COLONIAL DAYS 

Most of the Dutch churches in the Hudson and 
Mohawk valleys had a family resemblance in their 
solidity and small proportions, several of them 
being built in whole or in part of little yellow 
bricks brought from Holland. The diminutive, 
square, hooded windows were set with tiny panes 
of glass. Happily they were guarded on the out- 
side by heavy iron cross-bars, for the small boys, 
then as in our day, threw stones. The gable end 
faced the road. In the towns this architectural 
feature meant, "Love thy neighbor as thyself,"— 
the idea being to let the snow and rain fall in 
your own yard and not on the heads of street folks 
and passers-by. 

The Sleepy Hollow church at Tarrytown, still 
standing and in use, though greatly altered, is 
a fair type of those structures. Inside the edifice 
were two connected gaUeries, one on the west and 
one on the north side, and both were very near 
neighbors to the high pulpit. Two beams, each a 
foot square, set north and south across the mside 
of the building, bound the walls together. The 
ceiling was of white painted boards. The six-sided 
sounding-board of white oak, five feet above the 



186 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

pulpit, was suspended from the crossed timber 
above by an iron rod. To these beams the kievits, 
or phoebe birds — after which Kievit's Hoek, on 
the Connecticut River, was named — used to come 
and build their nests. Untaught in the golden 
virtue of silence, these and other feathered visitors 
kept up gossip and scolding during the service, to 
the disturbance of the Domine and the delight of 
the little folks. 

The sturdy Dutchman, like other puritans, dis- 
dained support to his spine while listening to doc- 
trinal sermons one or two hours long. Before the 
Reformation there were no pews, for these came in 
with Protestantism, and are a family institution. At 
first it was a luxury, as well as a novelty, to sit at all. 
When aristocratic fashions imported from Eng- 
land prevailed, there were in the Dutch churches 
at Albany, Schenectady, and in other places, on 
either side of the old pulpit, " the thrones," that 
is, seats elevated a little above the level of the 
others, covered with rich curtains, and meant for the 
special use of the family of the lord of the manor, 
or, in a free town, the local magistrates. Here sat 
the Patroon and his wife, he occupying the one 
side and the lady the other. In later days, during 
devotional exercises, there were short curtains slid- 
ing on brass rods, and screening off the inmates, 
which were drawn aside during the sermon, mak- 
ing the inmates, the Domine, and the congregation 
visible to one another. 



SUNDAYS IN COLONIAL DAYS 187 

The Tarry town bell, still swinging in the belfry 
and summoning summer worshipers, was, like 
others, in the Mohawk Valley and on Manhattan, 
cast in Patria. Amsterdam was famous for its 
foundries, and the metal from captured Spanish 
cannon was plentiful and cheap. The bronze of 
many hundreds of the bells in music-loving Hol- 
land once made the thunder of war. Besides its 
rich ornamentation of raised figures, the Tarry- 
town bell bears the inscription from Romans viii. 
31, — "Si Deus nobis, quis contra nos," and the 
date 1685. In very early days the bell was rung 
in most of the settlements three times a day, to 
sound the hours of breakfast, dinner, and supper 
for housekeepers and the men at work in field or 
street, and always when there was a christening. 
Then people went in the church to see the baby 
held in the Domine's arms. Whoever else might 
come, the minister and elder must be present. 

On the sacramental table the communion serv- 
ice of colonial days, sometimes of pewter, but 
oftener of silver, is in many Reformed churches 
still in use. In larger edifices, long tables were 
laid down the aisles. The baptismal bowl used 
to be placed in a socket or bracket extending 
from the pulpit. The pulpits, usually brought 
from Holland, were octagonal in shape, each sug- 
gesting a wineglass in form, and just large enough 
to hold one man. Set up on a wooden standard, 
or demi-column, about nine inches in thickness, 



188 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

each was mounted by a little stairway. Loftier 
than the minister's crown was a peg upon which 
to hang his cocked hat. In silken gown and neck 
band of linen, cambric hefje^ or bands, the Domine 
set out from the parsonage arrayed for service. On 
entering he doffed his three-cornered hat, and then 
the men streamed behind him to their seats. 

The Dutch Church edifices were greatly altered 
after the Revolutionary War, and in one respect 
they were made to conform to the simple and 
more democratic style common before the English 
conquest. Then also the relics of feudalism, the 
curtained seats of grandeur for the manor lord 
and lady and places for the magistrates, were re- 
moved. In their stead were set, as in Holland, 
pews for the members of the Consistory, elders 
and deacons, in front of each of whom, on the 
projecting shelf of the pew front, was laid a 
Bible. The hymn-book had bound up with it the 
Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession of 
Faith, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, held in 
1619, and the forms for Ordination, Communion, 
Marriage, Burial, and Installation used in the lit- 
urgy, and also the prayers of the Reformed Church 
of the Netherlands. When in modern days the 
wineglass pulpit was exchanged for a more fash- 
ionable sort, the mahogany of the old one was 
usually made into souvenirs of some kind, tables 
or bookcases. Invertebrated hard oak was ex- 
changed for soft pine benches without cushions, 



SUNDAYS IN COLONIAL DAYS 189 

but with high, straight backs. It seemed like veri- 
table laps of luxury, and "flowery beds of ease," 
when cushioned seats were provided for saints and 
sinners alike. 

In colonial days, the meeting-house in winter 
was warmed chiefly by the zeal of the preacher. 
The bodily heat of the men was kept in by great- 
coats. No wood stove radiated roasting heat a few 
inches, nor did sheet-iron pipes of imposing length 
and ugliness, as in later times, traverse the space 
from wall to wall. The women found the holy 
tabernacles less arctic and more amiable than did 
the men. Girls and matrons, who came with silver- 
clasped Bibles, hung by chatelaines at their belts, 
had foot stoves. In the case of well-to-do folk 
these were usually carried by the negro servants. 
In other instances, the boys, or servant maids, 
or even Mynheer himself, were the heat-bearers. 
In later days, hot bricks from the sleigh were 
wrapped up, and took the place of " stovey " for 
caloric. If the " klinkers " got cold before the serv- 
ice ended, — for sermons were considered outra- 
geous, and it was thought that the Domine " ran 
out of timber" if they were too short, — the men 
went right up to the stove and heated them again 
on the logs or embers. In modern days, when cast- 
iron wood burners were introduced, high was their 
mounting on stilts, — so that the galleries could 
get warm. Terrific at times was the raking and 
banging of the iron door by the sexton, who was 



190 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

very apt to magnify his office as fireman, even to 
the extent of a million diameters. 

Usually saplings, that grew to be grand old 
trees, were early planted near the " Kerk." In the 
summer time the men sat out under their shade 
on smooth stones or benches until the minister 
came, when they all rose up like a flock of sheep, 
following their wether into the fold. Many were 
the proverbs about the Domine, who, in the days 
before newspapers and magazines, was on week 
days a walking library and on Sunday an oracle. 
" As the Domine sneezes, so sneeze we all," was a 
common saying. " I hold by your coat tails, Dom- 
ine," confessed many a docile parishioner. Before 
the social pipe or glass was enjoyed, " Domine 
eerst " was the polite and waiting word. No won- 
der that the sociable pastor visited often at the 
most hospitable homes, and sometimes brought 
down the sarcastic fling, "The Domine comes 
often for the wine " ; while of a reverend but incor- 
rigible old pipe smoker it was said, " He belongs 
to the family of John Tobacco " (Jan Tabak). 
Considering the pithiness of many Dutch proverbs, 
" translation is treachery." 

At Dorp, or Schenectady, when the juffrouio^ or 
Domine's wife, entered the church, the whole con- 
gregation stood up to greet her. It was the uni- 
versal clerical custom for the preacher, before 
mounting the pulpit, to stand at the foot of the 
stairs, and, with one hand holding his hat and the 



SUNDAYS IN COLONIAL DAYS 191 

other raised in silent prayer, to make spiritual 
invocation before he ascended. When seated, he 
selected the biblical passage for the clerk or fore- 
reader, who had his desk below. This impor- 
tant person, often school-teacher, funeral direc- 
tor, and man of much if not all work, read to 
the people the appointed chapter of Scripture, and 
afterwards gave out the psalm, usually acting as 
precentor. This order of worship is still followed 
in the Fatherland. If these colonial assistants 
read with the same fine effect and reverend devo- 
tion as I have often heard the Scriptures ren- 
dered by the precentors in Holland, it seems no 
wonder that Scripture-reading then, as now, was 
often declared and felt to be quite as important 
as the minister's discourse, for correct reading is, 
ipso facto, both illumination and commentary. 

The ordinary sermon was from seventy-five to 
ninety minutes long, with occasional tendency 
to plethoric continuity. Being divided into two 
parts, with a collection in between, it was borne 
more cheerfully than in later times, when books 
were numerous and homilies must be short. Then 
the proverb was occasionally flung at the Domine, 
*'He can't let go of his sermon." 

The universal rule was to take at every service 
two collections for almsgiving,— one for the Church 
support, and one for the poor. There was nothing 
stingy about a Dutchman when it came to his 
Church. His was ever an open hand, and few 



192 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

people support their spiritual shepherds better 
than the Dutch. On Communion Sundays, the 
table was drawn out to its full length, inside the 
railing or down the aisle, and the people sat 
around it in successive companies, every company 
receiving an address from the minister. As each 
person approached the table, he, or more often 
she, would lift the edge of the cloth and deposit 
under it the silver or copper coin, which was to be 
used only for the purchase of bread and wine for 
the sacrament. 

At noon there was an hour's intermission be- 
tween the services, when the people ate their lunch 
and chatted together, usually in the grove near the 
church. Planted as shoots, these chestnuts, oaks, 
maples, or poplars grew up to be magnificent 
" trees of the Lord, full of sap." With their in- 
crease the worshiper's storehouse of precious mem- 
ories and sweet experiences was filled. 

The subjects with these neighbors were at first 
theological and edifying, but soon tapered off to 
matters of daily routine, simple business, or elabo- 
rate gossip. People rode long distances on horse- 
back, and this equitation gave the young men an 
opportunity to exhibit their dexterity and gal- 
lantry in assisting the rosy maids from their 
saddles. The courtings, the flirtations, the love- 
makings, and the delightful little nothings that 
took place during the intermission between ser- 
mons were moments of joy at the time, and became 



SUNDAYS IN COLONIAL DAYS 193 

rich flowers in memory's gardens. Although ex- 
cess of this " charm that Eden never lost" might 
spoil, for the afternoon, the full effect of the second 
sermon, yet who, other than the Domine, would 
be called in to complete the work begun on Sun- 
day noon and join for life the lovers ? Verily " the 
better the day the better the deed." The church 
records and the private cash accounts of the 
Domines show that the people were as generous 
then as now, indeed, rather more so, we judge 
from the many books we have seen, in paying for 
the privilege of linking their lives with yoke-fel- 
lows. In Dutch neither man nor woman is married 
to any one. Bride or groom marries with him or 
her. In New Netherland boys and girls were both 
educated, and men and women were more on an 
equality than after the time of English fashions. 
Until quite recent times all marriage fees were paid 
by the Domine into the church treasury, and were 
not private perquisites, as at present, or gifts to 
the lady of the parsonage. 

The first use of the English language at a bap- 
tism, September 25, 1785, greatly offended some 
good people, who made mighty outcry against the 
innovation. " How shaU we sing the Lord's song 
in a strange tongue ? " voiced their feeling. Indeed, 
it was difficult for Dutch folk in their old age 
to understand how God could reveal his truths in 
any language but that of their fathers. 



CHAPTER XX 

ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS 

The settlement near the head of Hudson River 
navigation was named successively Fort Orange, 
Rensselaerwijk, Beverwijk, Willemstadt, and Al- 
bany. The business of the Company centred in 
the fort, that of the patroon in office and ware- 
house. While in the Church was the focus of the 
higher life of the community, the manor house 
was the seat of a generous hospitality. After the 
English conquest, several of the royal governors 
were entertained here, receiving impressions of a 
refinement of manners and home life, for which 
their prejudices, engendered by national rivalry 
and the wars between England and Holland, had 
not prepared them. 

Concerning Albany there is a rich literature of 
description, and the works of Kalm, and Mrs. 
Grant, and Cooper's "Satanstoe," may be men- 
tioned as examples, but these and the documents 
and writings after 1664 hardly concern us. We 
can but glance at life here subsequent to the fall 
of New Netherland. 

After the learned Domine Megapolensis removed 
to Manhattan, the community enjoyed the services 
first of Domine Schaats, and then of a long line of 



ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS 195 

learned ministers, who were university graduates. 
When the weaknesses of age were creeping on, 
these showed the graces and virtues and the faults 
and infirmities of men who in the sacred office 
have the usual experiences in dealing with saints 
and sinners, — the former sometimes giving as 
much trouble to the shepherd of the flock as did 
the straying sheep. One of these lovely characters 
wanting to get rid of his Domine, after making his 
life a burden gave him a strong hint that he had 
better go to a new field. The reverend pastor, on 
opening his door one morning, found a walking 
staff and a loaf of bread, and on the doorstep a 
pair of shoes with the toes pointing outward. In 
each shoe lay a silver coin for the journey. 

Such things were not done in frontier days. 
Only when men had become purse-proud was the 
roughness of frontier life exchanged for subtle 
malice. After a few generations most of the indus- 
trious Albany folks were well off, and then Jesh- 
urun often " waxed fat and kicked." In the main 
however, the relations between the Domme and 
his household and with all his parishioners were 
mutually pleasant. The threefold influences ema- 
nating from the Stadt-Huys, the manorial man- 
sion, and the parsonage, with the abundant wealth 
of the burghers, the frequent visits of the Indians 
in both groups and crowds, the numerous negro 
slaves and servants in gay livery, and the almost 
constant coming and going of royal regiments and 



196 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

commanders gave Albany the air of a metropolitan 
city. Its situation at the head of river navigation, 
having easy connection with Canada, and being 
withal the gateway into the Mohawk Valley and 
the beginning of the pathway to the great West, 
showed that it was, with the fur and lumbering in- 
dustry, destined to wealth, and when New York 
became a state, to be its capital. 

With the demand for luxury, finer clothes, and 
a natural desire to have prosperity display itself 
in elegant and sometimes ostentatious living, shops 
were early opened to supply the needs of the Dutch 
folks. Clothing, many things of adornment, and 
almost every sort of smallclothes were made at 
home, but shoes were imported ready made. Both 
at Albany and on Manhattan some of these shops 
became famous throughout the province. In the 
ladies' wardrobe, the kimono, imported from Japan, 
or made something after the style of Japanese gar- 
ments, was quite common. This was the time of 
abundant commerce between Holland and the 
Empire of the Rising Sun, which was closed to all 
nationalities in Europe except the Dutch. Arti- 
cles of Japanese lacquer (lacwark) and Japanese 
swords are heard of and noted in the colonial in- 
ventories. The Japanese rok^ chamber-gown or 
dressing-sack exclusively for women (curiously 
called kimono, which is the general term for a gar- 
ment), was almost as well known in Europe and 
America then as it is now. 



ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS 197 

This was the time of fads and fashions in Patria, 
which were reproduced in Dutch America. Origi- 
nating in a little country already gorged with the 
wealth of the Orient, we see them in the changing 
scene reflected on the canvas and often told in a story 
within a picture frame. The imported Dutch fash- 
ions showed themselves in America especially when 
Delft ware appeared, in the hanging of crockery on 
the walls, and in rows of dishes on dressers. The 
lining of fireplaces with tiles rich in Scripture 
scenes and incidents, represented the Bible scenes 
as children could understand them. The liking for 
silver, as well as the abundance of it, was shown 
in making and presenting souvenir spoons, with 
special gifts at weddings, funerals, christenings, 
birthdays, and church festivals. In the rich social 
life of the Netherlanders, these things of art were 
commonplaces rather than luxuries. 

None of the colonists of the many nationalities 
in the thirteen colonies excelled the Dutch in house- 
hold necessities and luxuries. Indeed, as was often 
said, there were people who could get along with- 
out the former, but must have the latter. Even 
the first question of their catechism had the word 
" comfort " in it. In the eighteenth century the 
first stages of colonial life had passed and wealth 
had accumulated. The English governors sent to 
rule New Netherland were surprised not only at 
the fine manners of the Dutch, which were no new 
thing, but at the luxury so generally enjoyed. 



198 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

On the frontier it was necessary to have in the 
shops supplies of what the Indians wanted. The 
new materials and appliances of Europe had almost 
annihilated native crafts and industries. The red 
man could not make for himself or repair the 
guns, tools, and textiles which he bought for furs 
and wampum. He scorned the white man's civil- 
ization, which virtually meant in his eyes the de- 
gradation of a man, as warrior and hunter, to 
the level of a squaw. He was equally opposed to 
the elevation of woman, who was his toy and 
slave. The white man's powers of destruction and 
his vices were learned much more easily than were 
his virtues or his constructive ability. The savage 
could shoot and kill, drink brandy or swill beer 
to drunkenness, but he could neither mend, nor 
distill, nor brew. 

Because of contact with the palefaces, the In- 
dian in his degradation exhibited the harmony 
and the discords of what we term civilization. 
The forces of destruction and advance must be in 
equilibrium, with a general tendency toward the 
prevalence of the good, or the race reverts to 
brutishness. It was not the Indian only who illus- 
trated this law. The European colonists who left 
the Church and social restraints, and, it may be, 
adopted Indian ways, sank lower and lower, and 
furnished the social waste, of which, all things 
considered, there was in New Netherland surpris- 
ingly little. 



ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS 199 

The settlements on the site of Albany, Dutch 
and English, for a hundred years remained the 
centre of the Indian trade. Then the city became 
the base of military operations. Although furs, 
fish, river traffic, and the lumber industry had in 
succession brought wealth, each or all of these 
were but slight means of enrichment as com- 
pared with war contracts. When large armies 
moved up and down the great water-troughs, or the 
land paths, between Manhattan and Canada and 
from the Hudson to the Niagara, certain trades 
proved to be especially profitable. Interior am- 
munition in those days was deemed as indispen- 
sable as powder and ball, and no soldiers marched 
without plenty of rum barrels. The molasses 
brought from the West Indies was turned into a 
liquid which, after pouring rivulets of bliss down 
the throat, set the brain on fire. Besides the mili- 
tary demand for "courage," — ascribed to the 
Dutch, but usually made in New England, and 
quite English, also, — the Indian traders carried 
tens of thousands of kegs into the wilderness to 
make beasts of the savages, and to cause fighting 
and murder. The Indians when returning home 
from Albany must also have a 'good supply. In- 
deed, the town was long like a fountain, ever 
sending forth streams sweet in the tasting, but in 
efPects bitter. The Iroquois found that no bite of 
copperhead or rattlesnake was worse than that 
of the invisible serpent in the bottle. No Indian 



200 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

eloquence reached a higher point of pathos than 
when the victims of the distillery themselves 
begged for prohibition. Piteous were the appeals 
of the chiefs to have the firewater kept out of 
their villages, but the white man's greed prevailed 
over his ethics. On the whole, the Dutch legisla- 
tion regulating the sale of liquor among the In- 
dians was far in advance of the English, who 
made steady importation of negroes, notions, mo- 
lasses, and New England rum. 

The first house of worship in Albany was near 
the present steamboat landing. It was small and 
cheaply built. By 1656, when the second edifice 
was reared, there were not a few men of substance 
in the community. With the Patroon's contribu- 
tion of a thousand guilders and the people's sub- 
scription of fifteen hundred more, there was the 
wherewithal for rearing a noble structure. AYhen 
finished it was the delight of the inhabitants and 
the wonder of the Indians. Like Solomon's litter, 
it was paved with love. The corner stone was laid 
by the oldest magistrate, Kutger Jacobsen, with 
the usual ceremonies, according to the beautiful 
liturgy of the Reformed Church. This, though 
then verbally different from the present form, 
always included the idea of the Hebrew poet, — 
" Except the Lord build the city, they labor in 
vain who build it." Profoundly religious, " Nisi 
Dominus frustra" was ever in the Netherlander's 
thoughts, as it was also on the seal of his Church ; 



ALBANY AND ITS ANNALS 201 

and this, because the thought — without God, all 
is vain — was the very marrow of his theology. 

A pulpit in those days was the symbol of au- 
thoritative utterance. The congregation subscrib- 
ing twenty-five beavers and the Company adding 
seventy-five guilders, a wineglass-shaped structure 
was sent over from Holland, in which many godly 
and eloquent men have stood. As a precious relic 
it is still preserved. The Company, also, gave a 
bell, which long rang out with its silvery tongue the 
invitation to worship. The notable church adorn- 
ments consisted of wapen, or coats of arms, of the 
principal families, wrought into the glass of the 
windows. Besides the most illustrious of these 
names, the Schuylers, Wendells, van Rensselaers, 
etc., there were hundreds of others, now listed 
and accessible in the Year Books of the Holland 
Society of New York. 



CHAPTER XXI 

DORP AND ITS STORY 

The Iroquois term of location eastward of the 
Long House, " Schenectady," has been spelled in 
fifty-nine different ways, and the names of the 
modern city are many and significant. " Schno- 
nowe," "The Dorp," "Les nouvelles habitations 
hollandaises," "Schenectady," " Schoon-echten- 
deel" (beautiful portion), "The Ancient City," 
" The Finished Place," " The Electric Capital," are 
names given fondly or humorously to the first 
settlement on the Mohawk, or the municipality 
founded by Arendt van Curler, whose noble life 
ended in 1667. 

In the next year, 1668, a fresh move on the 
chessboard of European politics made the young 
settlement thrill. The triple Alliance of England, 
Holland, and Sweden against France, the owner 
of Canada, populated the American woods with 
scalp-hunters, and made new danger for the fron- 
tiersmen. Although for the safety of New York 
the Iroquois in the Long House were still like a 
wall of life and fire, yet politics and religion, being 
yoked together, had altered the situation. The 
French Jesuits had converted many Mohawks, and 
led off a contingent of "praying Indians " to Mon- 



DORP AND ITS STORY 203 

treal. Their new zeal, added to their elemental 
passions, made war a delight. In this was a star- 
tling danger for the Dorp on the Mohawk. 

These free farmers were never in favor either 
with the aristocratic manor folks at Albany, or with 
"John Company's" servants at Manhattan, or with 
the Court party that fawned on the English gov- 
ernors or fattened with the land speculators from 
Great Britain. Very much as the rich Puritans of 
the Massachusetts Bay at first looked down on the 
Pilgrims at Plymouth — as Anabaptists, poor re- 
lations, and as too democratic, even to boorishness 
— was the southern view of the frontier villagers 
on the Mohawk. Andros was especially severe with 
" the Dorp," and on one occasion he actually block- 
aded the place for a month. The right to bolt flour 
and to trade in furs was denied the Dorpians, and 
many a time did the sheriff come up from Albany 
to search houses and keep money in the pockets 
of patroon and Company. The bolting of flour was 
Manhattan's monopoly, to the bloating in wealth 
of men already rich, and to the inconvenience and 
impoverishing of the villagers who could have only 
meal. It is significant that on the city seal of 
Schenectady is a sheaf of wheat, while on that 
of New York City are windmill sails and barrels 
of flour. The secret of Manhattan's early wealth 
and of Schenectady's hardship is thus told as elo- 
quently as the golden codfish of Massachusetts re- 
veals the sea as the source of colonial riches. 



204 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Jacob Leisler opposed this monopoly, and stood 
for the freedom of the people. When, by the 
choice of the men of the province and appoint- 
ment of the Committee of Safety, Leisler was 
made Director of Affairs, he promised the Sche- 
nectady people freedom of trade and the right to 
bolt flour. Was it any wonder that, in 1690, most 
of the Schenectady people were Leislerian in sym- 
pathy and acts? Yet as there were also anti- 
Leislerians, the Dorp was as a house divided 
against itself, — a fact which, alas, was known in 
Canada. 

Peter Tassemacher (the name meaning pocket 
or cup maker) was the first Domine settled in the 
Dorp. He had seen not a little of the world be- 
fore he was killed to please the Versailles boudoir. 
After his preparatory examination at Rhenen on 
the Rhine, he had been a teacher in the English 
Church at the Hague, served in South America, 
and after 1652 in several churches in lower New 
Netherland, being popular wherever he went. Yet 
he had his critics. Two Labadists, Danker and 
Sluyter, while prospecting for a settlement of 
their fellow believers in America, and before de- 
ciding upon Maryland, visited Schenectady. Their 
snarling criticisms of the sermons and manners of 
this and other Dutch ministers may be read in the 
published journal of their travels. Tassemacher 
must have been at least ordinarily eloquent. 

The Church at Schenectady began its existence 



DORP AND ITS STORY 205 

some time before 1680. The old artilleryman, 
Hans Janse Eencluys, who had served the Com- 
pany, with Jacobus van Curler, in Connecticut, 
and later the Patroon at Rensselaerwijk, lived on 
the ground which is now the campus of Union 
College. Eencluys' s Kill, " the brook which bounds 
through Union's grounds," still bears his name 
on its murmuring waters. He made over to the 
Church, for the benefit of the poor at Schenectady, 
his plantation, on condition that he should be kept 
in his old age and weakness. The deacons took 
good care of him until his death in 1683. Then 
they buried him with honors, and administered 
on his estate. The Arme weg, or "poor pasture," 
furnished fodder for the villagers' cows for nearly 
two centuries. 

According to local tradition, some people who 
were owners of cattle, but not at all "poor," 
abused the generosity of the deacons, and took 
advantage of the free pasture. Thereupon a law 
was made that all cows properly entitled to free 
grass should have one horn painted red. The cure 
proved worse than the disease. Soon every cow m 
the place had a crimson horn. In a sense not 
modern the town was " painted red." 

Dutch churches have ever been guardians of 
the poor, the orphan, the aged, and of all who 
were without natural protectors. No country on 
earth excelled Patria in wisely and beneficently 
organized charity, and what the people were and 



206 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

did in Patria was but slightly changed in New 
Netherland. By the faithful work of the churches, 
as administered by the deacons and the family 
organization, many of the modern miscellaneous 
charities were rendered unnecessary. 

The prosperous condition of the poor fund, from 
1680 to 1690, is shown in that, when the deacons' 
accounts were audited by Domine Tassemacher, 
the money on hand amounted to about 4000 guil- 
ders, or 11000, worth now at least fSOOO, — a hand- 
some sum for a little church in a frontier village 
of sixty log cabins. On the parsonage they built 
for the Domine, Claes van der Volgen helped. He 
was the famous young man, who, his life spared 
in the massacre of 1690, went to Canada, was 
adopted into the tribe, lived as an Indian, but re- 
turned to his home, and died in old age as a Chris- 
tian, a deacon, and a Dorpian. Happily a Delilah, 
of whom he was enamored, sheared oif his scalp 
lock, and the strength of his Indian desires van- 
ished. 

It is to be hoped that the Domine had light 
enough to read his Hebrew Bible and Greek New 
Testament in his little parsonage study-room, for 
an item of two glass windows costing ten guilders 
is not suggestive of luxury. It reveals rather the 
scarcity of the transparent medium imported from 
Europe. The home-made " lights " in most of 
the houses consisted of tough paper greased with 
lard, with perhaps many a joke about "American 



DORP AND ITS STORY 207 

stained glass," which was hardly up to the Goiula 
standard in Patria. The Dutch had even peti- 
tioned to build a new house of worship for their 
popular pastor. The extra expenses, to which the 
congregation was put on the Domine's account, 
were evidently in anticipation of his marriage, 
about which tradition has many tongues. A buxom 
young widow was to be the Jiiffrouio, and the mer- 
rymaking on the sad night of February 8, 1690, 
is said to have been the engagement party, after 
the manner of Patria. According to another le- 
gend, a squaw, for soiling with snow or mud the 
spotless floor, was roundly scolded by a neat house- 
wife. The Indian woman, who possibly suspected 
what was coming, answered that it would be dirty 
enough in a few days. Instead of nuptials, the 
parsonage became the scene of slaughter and the 
funeral pile of its occupant. 

Between dansfer from Canada and the Leisler 
troubles, the villagers were already in the shadow 
of a great peril from without and in danger of an- 
archy from within. During the previous summer 
of 1689, the haughty Mohawks of the Mohawk Val- 
ley, allies of the Dutch and English, had destroyed 
Montreal. For this proceeding, the French were 
bound to take vengeance. The Leisler troubles 
divided the people, and the " Commonality " were 
ready to take up arms against the partisans of 
Andros, the flour monopolists, and the Jacobites. 
Yet both parties laughed at the idea of the distant 



208 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

French being able so soon to recoup and unite for 
a blow on the settlements as far south as Albany. 
Besides, they forgot those Mohawks who were allies 
with the French in faith. Their criminal neglect 
and fatal delusion brought the Dorpians to grief. 

After years of locked gates, sentinels pacing 
their lonely rounds on the palisade platform, after 
the building of a fort, and — as the result of 
Leisler's union of the colonies — the reinforcements 
of its garrison by Connecticut militia, Fate seemed 
to mock Providence. Just when the storm of war 
broke without warning, the gates were wide open, 
the entrance being blocked only by a fall of snow 
and by two mock sentinels of the same material. 
One and all, soldiers and burghers, from cradled 
babies to venerable sires, the Doraine and his 
flock, the latter after a merrymaking between sun- 
set and midnight, were wrapped in the deepest 
slumbers. 

All this amazing neglect of common care was 
because of the division of the people into Leis- 
ler and anti-Leisler parties. In the vehemence of 
factional quarrels, ordinary precautions were not 
taken, and danger was sniffed at. In mid-winter, 
with from five to twenty feet of snow on the trails, 
who would be so mad as to face danger and cold 
over a stretch of a hundred miles ? Yet the French 
dared. 

More than one description of the fort and ham- 
let that thus tempted mighty France in Canada 



DORP AND ITS STORY 209 

had been sent to Versailles. Woman's beauty, 
courtly favor, and royal commands, in an age of 
loyalty, were the spurs that drove the gallant young 
French officers to brave the menace of death by 
cold and starvation. They would root out the nest 
of heretics, and win, perhaps, a fur preserve for 
the glutting of the markets of France. So, on 
snowshoes, leading their red allies and their loyal 
henchmen through winter's whiteness and silence, 
they reached the Mohawk. To their surprise, on 
crossing the river's ice sheet, the Frenchmen found 
the village gates open. 

Quickly ranging themselves in lines along the 
streets, they raised the war whoop, and with spear, 
tomahawk, sword, powder and ball, began the 
work of blood. At the outset, one unforgetting 
Canada brave, long ago treated kindly by Deacon 
Wendell, came with a led horse, dragged out his 
friend, threw a blanket over him, and at the gate, 
past all his fellow savages, gave the brute a whack 
on the flank which started the rider to Albany. 
Nearly dead and half frozen. Deacon Wendell lived 
to become the ancestor of the witty essayist and 
physico-theologian, our Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
who himself told me the story that is confirmed 
by witnesses of the old time. 

Among the victims was Domine Tassemacher. 
He was to have been saved, for the Frenchmen 
wanted his papers. Tomahawked early in the mas- 
sacre, and tossed back to cremation in his par- 



210 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

sonage, little that had once been his was found 
in the ashes. Another victim was a son of Anneke 
Janse. Among the saved or lost were the ancestors 
of scores of the most famous families of the Em- 
pire State. 

At daylight Sanders Glen, an anti-Leislerian, 
who lived in his loopholed and palisaded house at 
Scotia, across the river, was visited by the French 
officers. They promised him his life and the lives 
of his relatives then among the prisoners, because 
of his past kindness to their people. Going over 
to the village, he chose out so many to be set free 
that the Canadian Mohawks grumbled, and further 
rescue proceedings were stopped. Then the plunder 
was loaded on fifty horses, the twenty-seven cap- 
tives tied, and all the houses, except four or five, 
were set on fire. Sixty corpses lay on the level 
waste of ashes. Twenty -five persons had escaped. 
Most of the dead who were not killed at once, 
but who in mortal wounds perished in their night- 
clothes, were found frozen on what was later called 
"Martyrs Street." The anti-Leislerians gloated 
because Leisler's " seditious letters now found all 
bloody upon Schenectady streets, with the motions 
of a free trade, bolting," etc., had been picked up. 

Schenectady became the theme of grave debate 
between Versailles and London. Gay was the chat 
among lace-cuffed ministers of Louis XIV over 
the destruction of the heretics of the frontier vil- 
lage. But the Dutchmen of Dorp, though cast 



DORP AND ITS STORY 211 

down, would not be destroyed. They hated Albany 
patroonism and feudalism and Manhattan monopo- 
lies as bitterly as ever. As unquailing in their per- 
severance, and as tenacious in their love of free- 
dom as had been their fathers behind the dikes, the 
remnant came back. These free farmers, despite 
poverty and all discouragements, would neither 
yield to the seductions of patroonism at Albany, 
nor back down before the further menace from 
Canada. Freedom was too sweet. 

As soon as spring warmed the ground, the rem- 
nant of the survivors were back to seed their 
farms, to rebuild among the ashes their homes, 
and on the old site to uprear the palisades and 
start the town again. At intervals they welcomed 
back from captivity the captives, often grown from 
boyhood to man's estate. Sometimes these had 
been adopted into Indian families, but on their 
return they were quickly won to civilization again. 

Until the Peace of Ryswijk, in 1697, there was 
no safety in the Mohawk Valley except behind for- 
tifications. The farmer worked with a musket at 
his side. There were many funerals of men found 
in the fields without hair and with lead inside their 
bodies. More than one skull have I seen at Dorp 
cloven by tomahawks, or perforated with balls, 
and sometimes with leaden bullets rattling inside, 
when the old cemetery was emptied. Nevertheless, 
because of the movement of large bodies of Brit- 
ish soldiers through the town, wealth increased. 



212 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

By 1700 the people were able to call a minister 
and build a new house of worship. Thenceforth 
life became much richer in every way. In 1734 a 
fine new stone church, fifty-six by eighty feet, was 
built. With a belfry, bell from Amsterdam, clock, 
and a gilded weather-vane surmounting all, the 
sacred edifice must have seemed almost metropol- 
itan in its imposing proportions. For over a cen- 
tury, until it melted in a fire which consumed this 
fourth house of worship, the sweet tones of the 
bell from Patria called to prayer and praise. 

When the daily promenades of " our rural di- 
vinity " ceased, and paved streets and brick side- 
walks came into fashion, in place of lanes and 
cow-tracks, the New York Central Railroad Com- 
pany wanted the land which was formerly " the 
poor pasture," just about the time that the Church 
lost the edifice by fire. The Arme weg of Een- 
cluys, over which iron horses had long been 
careering, was sold for $11,500, which sum was 
applied, in 1862, to the building of the gem of ar- 
chitecture on which Edward Tuckerman Potter, 
brother of the late bishop now at rest in the Cathe- 
dral of St. John the Divine, lavished the wealth 
of his genius. When in June, 1880, we celebrated 
the two hundredth anniversary of the Church, with 
blazoned banners, floral symbols of bell, hourglass, 
font, and vane, with the church charter and other 
muniments in evidence, the list in the local news- 
papers showed that the Dutch clans and families, 



DORP AND ITS STORY 213 

with some others, were well represented. As the 
local newspapers reported : — 

The Bankers, Barhydts, Buskh'ks, Chisms, Clutes, 
Condes, Corls, Cregiers, de Forests, de Graffs, Dur- 
yees, Felthousens, Fondas, Freemans, Fullers, Gilles- 
pies, Glenns, Greggs, Groots, Grouts, Hagaraans, 
Hamlins, Harmans, Hoags, Kittles, Kleins,- Lansings, 
Marcelluses, Mynderses, Oothouts, Ostranders, Ostroms, 
Ouderkirks, Parmentiers, Pearses, Peeks, Plancks, 
Propers, Putnams, Quackenbushes, Quants, Reagleses, 
Reeses, Relyeas, Rosas, Ruoffs, Sanderses, Schermer- 
horns, Schoolcrafts, Scliuylers, Sellyes, Shaffers, 
Sitterleys, Slovers, Snyders, Speirs, Swarts, Switses, 
Swortfiguers, Tellers, Thorntons, Tolls, Truaxs, 
Twombleys, TurnbuUs, Tymesons, the Vans of all sorts 
the Vedders, the Veeders, Vieles, Visschers, Vibbards, 
Vorheeses, Vroomans, Waldrons, Wassons, Weather- 
waxes, Weekses, Wellers, Wemples, Wendells, Wessels, 
Westinghouses, Whitmyers, Wilkies, Winegarts, Whit- 
becks, were all out Sunday at the bi-centennial exercises 
in the First Reformed Church, besides scores of others 
bearing names familiar in Holland. 

Most prominent among the floral symbols on 
bi-centennial day were those of the Holy Book, 
the marriage bell, and the baptismal bowl. On 
Manhattan in 1694 the people's silver offerings of 
coins and ornaments were sent to Patria, and the 
Amsterdam artisans melted down the treasure and 
hammered out the sacred vessel still used in the 
church on Madison Avenue. From Schenectady a 



214 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

similar offering of white metal enriched the rim 
of the church bell. In these baskets of silver trans- 
lation lie Domine Selyns's apples of gold : — 

Not on mere water fix your sight, 
Ne'er to 've been born were better, 
But look for more in baptism's rite. 
Than that which kills — the letter. 
For, with his precious blood Christ knows 
How from my sins to cleanse me; 
And by His Spirit life bestows, 
Washing the wound that stains me. 

The limits of this little book do not allow a 
chapter on "the intellectuals" of New Nether- 
land, nor on its bibliography. There were poets 
and prose writers, and not all the works printed 
in Dutch were volumes of sermons. The church 
in Schenectady was typical in having a long line 
of scholarly pastors, graduates of universities, 
whose books in Mohawk, Dutch, and English, and 
the literature about the men and their writings, 
would make a respectable library. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 

The existence of New Netherland as a political 
entity ceased in 1664, after which, except for a 
short time in 1674, the Dutch people and their 
descendants were cut off from vital connection 
with Patria. All accounts and descriptions of the 
New York Dutchmen after these dates, especially 
when penned or drawn by persons living much 
later, are to be read with caution and taken with 
much critical salt. 

Happily for all, Colonel Richard Nicolls, the 
first governor of the Duke of York's province, 
spoke both Dutch and French. He was a conscien- 
tious Irish gentleman, who soon became master of 
hearts, winning all by his firmness, tact, and jus- 
tice. Among his first works were friendly con- 
sultation with the leading men in the province, 
rectification of its boundary lines, and renewal of 
covenant relations with the Indians. 

Nicolls and Stuyvesant became good friends. It 
is even suspected that the Irishman learned much 
from the Dutchman ; for, despite his merit, the 
King's officer was as arbitrary in action as was 
the servant of the late " John Company." Nicolls 
broke his promises of popular representation by 



216 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

summoning only a portion of the people, instead 
of all, by their delegates, to consider the new code 
of laws; but against this sweeping away their 
rights as citizens of New Amsterdam, the Dutch 
made vigorous protest. Nor was the English system 
of trial by jury (vulgarly supposed to date from 
Magna Charta) at all popular. 

After four years, Nicolls was succeeded by Sir 
Francis Lovelace, a man of less ability and char- 
acter, and even more arbitrary. Lovelace was the 
leader in a grand procession of English land specu- 
lators, who, making full use of their office, were 
in a hurry to get rich. Yet so long as the people 
saw that their governors meant even fairly well, 
and that their old customs or convictions were not 
disturbed, they loyally upheld them. The Duke's 
laws were accepted as surprisingly liberal (their 
real purpose not being yet revealed), and the 
Dutch, being ever a law-abiding people not given 
to quarreling over things apparently evil, so long 
as the desirable substance remained, acquiesced. 
Nevertheless, after two years, the general verdict 
seemed to be that, as compared with the sort fur- 
nished by kings and dukes, republican government 
was by far the better thing. 

When, therefore, Charles II of England joined 
Louis XIV in a compact of despots to destroy 
Dutch freedom, and war broke out, the news of a 
fleet of fifteen ships floating the orange, white, and 
blue, flag, and approaching New York, was received 



THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 217 

with joy. In Patria the Dutch cut the dikes, put 
their country under water, and drove out the 
French invaders. In New York Americans were 
quite ready to welcome Admiral Cornelius Evert- 
sen and Jacob Bincks. On August 7, 1673, twenty- 
three splendid Dutch warships with sixteen hun- 
dred soldiers of the Republic dotted the waters 
of New York Bay. Once more, on August 9, the 
flag of seven stripes, red and white, of the federal 
Republic floated over Manhattan. There were 
many tears of joy shed, caps thrown into the air, 
and huzzas of "Oranje boven" (up with the 
orange) given, as the symbol of freedom and fed- 
eration once more kissed the breeze. 

New York became New Netherland again. There 
were dissolving views of names and forms, as on 
the white sheet in lantern light, but the substance 
of society and daily custom scarcely knew change. 
The fort, enlarged and renamed Willem Hendrik, 
after the new stadtholder, William II, at home, 
and King William III in England, now mounted 
nearly two hundred guns. Colonel Anthony Colve 
was the military administrator. 

By this time " John Company " was defunct. 
The people, through their burgomasters and sche- 
pens, petitioned the States-General to assume the 
government of the province, which was agreed to, 
and Admiral de Ruyter's secretary, Joris Ad- 
ringa, was appointed civil governor ; but little be- 
yond routine was, or could be, done, as we shall see. 



218 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

In England, Parliament having had enough of 
King Charles, compelled him to stop the war, re- 
fusing to vote money or supplies, unless the royal 
job of doing the vile work of Louis XIV was 
called off. At the treaty made at Westminster, 
the Dutch, as many Englishmen thought, got the 
best of the bargain in diplomacy, for tropical re- 
gions were then considered much more valuable 
than colder lands. New York was given back to 
England, and Holland received Surinam, or, as it 
was then, Surreyham. 

Down in South America, on its north front, we 
find a country which we English-speaking people 
call Dutch Guiana, but which the Netherlanders 
have corrupted into " Surinam." Through this 
region Sir Walter Kaleigh vainly strove to pene- 
trate, to find the famed El Dorado, or country of 
the Gilded Man. Yet all the European colonies 
in South America, English, Dutch, and French, 
were at first failures. Dutch Guiana had been set- 
tled by the English, and British Guiana by the 
Dutch. When, after many trials, the English set- 
tlement became a success, the country was named 
after the Earl of Surrey. The tourist's impression 
of the country to-day is that of a transported 
Holland, in which the official language is Dutch 
and the parlance of the people is " taki-taki." 
The streets of the capital, Paramaribo, are lined 
with great mahogany trees, making arches that 
suggest cathedral aisles, or the " high embowdd 



THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 219 

roof" of Milton's poetry. Thus is Dutch America 
transferred from the north to the south, from the 
continent beneath the Dipper to the continent 
under the Southern Cross. 

At once Charles Stuart, the King, handed over 
the American province to James, Duke of York, 
who appointed Andros, a young major of dragoons, 
to be governor. In October, 1674, Andros arrived 
with the English frigates. Diamond and Castle. 
He was destined to play the role, so common in 
history, of a man successful in military life who 
becomes a failure in civil affairs. 

Good dinners and speeches, with complimentary 
presents, between Colve and Andros, made the 
exchange of ownership as polite and pleasant an 
affair as were those parlor reunions of diplomats in 
Europe which unleashed armies to soak the earth 
with human blood. Perhaps Andros did not know 
he was to be such a cat's paw and get so badly 
burned while trying to govern freemen, who, in 
both New England and New Netherland, loved the 
statutes of the realm, and law, which is older than 
kings or thrones, better than " secret instructions." 
The Duke's were again put in force in New York. 

One of the first things Andros did was to revert 
to a mediaeval practice as unjust to the province at 
large as anything ever done by the hated West 
India Company. He took away from the people 
of the interior towns the right to bolt and export 
flour, that is, sift meal from bran and sell it as fine 



220 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

flour. This outrageous monopoly, which meant 
little less than robbery and oppression of the farm- 
ers and millers of the province, so enriched New- 
York City that its wealth during the sixteen years 
of the monopoly's existence was tripled. At Albany 
and Schenectady this act caused men to grind 
their teeth in rage at such flagrant injustice, and 
created a state of feeling which made Leisler's 
power possible. In other ways, Andros, the ultra- 
royalist, made himself hateful to both Puritan 
New England and Dutch New York. Nor did he 
satisfy his master, King James II, who recalled 
him and sent over Governor Thomas Dongan in 
his place. 

Dongan convened a general assembly by votes 
of the people, which met October 17, 1683, — a 
large majority of the representatives being Dutch- 
men. They immediately passed the Charter of 
Liberties, which was intended to limit the powers 
of the governor and to secure the rights of the 
people, by means of a permanent popular repre- 
sentative assembly. This charter enacted that " the 
supreme legislative authority under His Majesty 
and His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York, 
Albany, etc., Lord Proprietor of the said Province, 
shall forever be and reside in the governor, council, 
and the people met in a general assembly." 

The people were thus made a constituent part 
of the Assembly by their chosen representatives, 
and the principle which Holland had already for 



THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 221 

more than two centuries maintained, that is, taxa- 
tion only by consent, was incorporated in the char- 
ter. This is the first use of the words " the people " 
in any American document. Governor Dongan ap- 
proved and the Duke signed this charter, October 
4, 1684, commenting favorably upon it. He even 
went so far as to say that if any amendments were 
made, they should be more advantageous to the 
people. Everything looked now as if a long bright 
day of absolute religious freedom had dawned upon 
New York, and this, notwithstanding the fact that 
several Jesuits had arrived with Dongan. There 
was great rejoicing, and the Dutch and other free 
churchmen felt happy indeed. The charter really 
gave more privileges to New York than were en- 
joyed by any other province, for no other charter 
had in it the expression " the people," who were 
thus recognized as an equal factor in the govern- 
ment. 

The document had been engrossed, but was not 
yet registered, when Charles II died, on February 
6, 1685. Then the Duke of York became King 
of England, and at once everything was changed. 
The transmission of the New York charter was 
suspended, for the dukedom of New York had 
become a royal province. 

In becoming sovereign, the quondam Lord Pro- 
prietor revealed at once the cloven foot. He de- 
clined flatly to complete the work he had once 
approved. Nevertheless, being an adept in cun- 



222 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ning and deception, he did not at once withdraw 
his signature or veto the charter, but actually 
allowed it to remain temporarily in force, while in 
the secret instructions which he as King sent to 
Governor Dongan, May 29, 1686, he wrote, annull- 
ing the Charter of Liberties. He said : " We de- 
clare our will and pleasure that the said bill or 
charter of franchise be forthwith repealed and 
disallowed." 

New York was placed under the care of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who was to license all 
the schoolmasters who should come from England. 
The absurdity of this measure is seen in the fact 
that as yet there was only a handful of English 
Conformists in New York, who had not one 
church building in all the province. 

The Dutch at once took the alarm, and began 
to organize that sturdy resistance which, ten years 
later, secured for them a charter that virtually 
annulled what King James and all his host had 
tried to foist upon them. In reality, the one object 
of this seemingly religious freedom, arrayed in 
the sheep's clothing of apparent liberality, was to 
secure an entrance of that form of Christianity, to 
be established by royal decree, for which King 
James later posed as champion. Yet, whereas one 
order in the Roman Communion was patronized 
by the French Governor, Denonville, in Canada, 
another one was favored by the Irish Governor 
Dongan in New York, who had his own chapel 



THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 223 

and worship under Father Hervey. There was 
much clashing, and the correspondence between 
the governors of Canada and New York, especially 
that relating to French brandy and Irish whis- 
key, and of fresh and rotten oranges, is decidedly 
amusing. 

Dongan gives a lively picture of the variety of 
religious forms, and his letter reads like a United 
States Census Report. There were Calvinism in 
four languages, Lutheranism in German, which he 
called " Dutch," abundance of Quaker preachers, 
men, and especially women, "singing Quakers, 
ranting Quakers, Sabbatarians, anti-Sabbatarians, 
some Jews, in short, of all sorts of opinion there 
are some and the most part of none at all. . . . 
But as for the King's natural born subjects, that 
live on Long Island and other parts of the gov- 
ernment, I find it a hard task to make them pay 
their ministers." 

The direct emigration from England to Man- 
hattan was very slow and never very great. Don- 
gan wrote in 1686 that not more than twenty 
families had come over from Great Britain, but 
on Long Island the Dutch and English popula- 
tion was increasing. 

Dongan, who deserves a biography, held back, 
as long as he could, the news from the people that 
their liberties were abrogated. Under him city 
charters were given to New York and Albany, — 
the first true cities in North America. In Janu- 



224 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ary, 1687, he issued the King's proclamation. 
Then he and his council assumed all authority. 
This left New York again a helpless, conquered 
province, the people having no voice in legislation 
or taxation. This for Dutchmen, who for centuries 
had paid only the taxes they themselves voted, 
could not last long. It meant revolution. After 
such tyranny, Bunker Hill and Yorktown were 
sure to come. The Declaration of 1776 was coun- 
ter revolution against crowned law breakers. 

King James was determined to unite New Eng- 
land and New York in one province, even if he had 
to trample on law and blot out charters. He re- 
called the good Governor Dongan, and sent over 
his own more pliable tool Andros, who annexed 
New York, New Jersey, and the eastern colonies 
as one royal province to the autocrat of all the 
Englands. Andros's commission over this enlarged 
territory is dated April 7, 1688, but already Eng- 
lishmen in the old home, who valued their endan- 
gered liberties, were preparing a secret invitation 
to a Dutch deliverer to come over and save them. 
On November 5, William III unfurled his banner 
bearing the ancient legend of the House of Nassau, 
"I will maintain." Two days before Christmas, 
in 1688, the despot James fled the country. 

William III, brought up in the Reformed Church 
of the Netherlands, which was the Church of four 
fifths of the people of New York, was very tolerant 
in church government and modes of worship. 



THE ENGLISH GOVERNORS 225 

Keality was his constant quest. It troubled him 
little to adopt the form of worship used in the 
Anglican Church, and in a few months the Act of 
Toleration was passed which began for modern 
Eno-land its career of freedom, hastening the time 
when the free churchmen should exceed by seats in 
the chapel and church edifices the Conformists. 
Yet before matters in New York settled down to 
peace under liberty, there was to take place " the 
Leisler episode," the truth concerning which has 
so long suffered eclipse. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
JACOB leisler: the people's champion 

" The Leisler episode " has been treated as a 
family quarrel, as a social cataclysm, as a dis- 
turbance between parsons and their flocks, and as 
a struggle of "Protestants" against "Papists." 
The best view to take is that of the cool historian, 
who looks at the background and scans the latest 
evidence. 

After the English conquest of 1664, with the 
increase of wealth, and the importation of Eng- 
lish court notions, fashions, and social gradations, 
unknown in a republic, there grew up an " aristo- 
cratic party." Scores of Dutchmen fawned on the 
English governors, securing fat offices and arro- 
gating to themselves luxury and privileges un- 
known in simpler days. These were the men who 
had secured for New York City the flour monop- 
oly, which took away from other places the right 
to bolt meal, that is, to sift out the bran and make 
flour. The monopolists were hated by the farmers, 
who looked on the Manhattan " court " as a centre 
of oppression. 

In Europe, France under Louis XIV had be- 
come the paramount power. Its State Church was 
a persecutor. Tens of thousands of Huguenots, in 



JACOB LEISLER 227 

fear of their lives, fled to Germany and Holland, 
but Louis sent his armies to ravage the Palatinate, 
or Rhine region, and in person invaded the Neth- 
erlands. The Dutch put their country under water 
and forced the French to retreat. William III of 
Holland gave his life to checkmate the plans of 
Louis, who in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes, 
which had given freedom of conscience to the 
Huguenots. Thousands of these French Bible- 
readers came to America. Among them was Jacob 
Leisler, the son of a French exiled minister and 
born at Frankfort. He had enlisted as a soldier 
in the Dutch West India Company. After this 
military service, he rose, by his diligence and 
character, to be a church officer, one of the rich- 
est merchants in New Netherland, and a judge. 
Naturally he was an intense Protestant, for he 
knew what persecution meant. As a deacon in the 
Dutch Reformed Church and a man of wide expe- 
rience, he loved the people, and generously helped 
the French immigrants. He was just the man to 
voice the feeling and act the will of the "Common- 
ality," or, in American English, the people. 

Unfortunately, the Domines then in the prov- 
ince did what the clergy so often do to-day, — 
they allowed their sympathies to go with their 
tastes. At the crisis, they turned their backs on 
the " Commonality," and sided with the men of 
wealth and office, many of whom were Anglo- 
maniacs of an acute type. 



228 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

King William III landed at Torbay with an 
army, half Dutch and half Huguenot, and was 
proclaimed in Great Britain and America as sov- 
ereign. The people of New York were wild with 
joy. The French immigrants, who had never slept 
a night without fear lest King James II might 
make alliance with the French, and send an army 
from Canada to invade New York and ship 
them all back to France, were now sure of safety 
and freedom. The Dutch rejoiced because Eng- 
land had a king of their own blood and liberal 
ideas. 

On Manhattan the situation was critical, for 
the office-holders, being all the creatures of James, 
had power to work mischief. The people waited 
anxiously for King William's agents, but when 
neither these nor the dispatches came, they showed 
their power. In Boston the citizens arrested and 
imprisoned Governor Andros, and appointed a 
Committee of Safety. 

The fort on Manhattan must be held by King 
William's friends. Of the trained band of volun- 
teers, Leisler was made first captain and then colo- 
nel. When the royal governor, Nicholson, over- 
stepped his authority and arbitrarily dismissed a 
sentinel, who was a gentleman, he found the peo- 
ple rising in wrath, and he fled. Then the coun- 
ties selected a Committee of Safety, and appointed 
Jacob Leisler captain of the fort. Later, they made 
him commander or governor of the whole province. 





WILLIAM III AND yUEKX MARV 
ON SEAL OF THE, PROVIXCE OB' NEW YOKK 



JACOB LEISLER 229 

There was no "usurpation" about it. Leisler 
chose counselors from each of the different nation- 
alities. 

Unfortunately, the aristocratic element for the 
most part stood aloof. The Domines, socially well 
disposed toward the former civil officials, who 
were members of their churches, held to the old 
order of things. In this, as so often with clerical 
conservatives, they proved themselves unable to 
read the signs of the times, or to understand that 
in the people is a truer instinct of order and 
righteousness than in the circles of privilege and 
fashion. At any rate, there seemed to be in the Re- 
formed clergy very little of the spirit of Abraham 
Lincoln. The Eeverend Messrs. Selyns, Dellius, 
and Varick thundered from their pulpits against 
Leisler's authority, so that he and his party were 
more bitterly excited. The Leislerians thought a 
divine opportunity had been given to establish 
better government and to separate Church and 
State. Their feelings, as members of the Dutch 
Church, which in Patria had always stood for the 
freedom of the people, were outraged. They were 
bitterly disappointed in their ministers. Almost 
to a man, the free farmers sided with Leisler. In 
the towns, while the people were divided, the ma- 
jority favored the ruler whom the people had 
chosen. 

With the whole populace — the Domines and 
the wealthier classes on one side, and the plain 



230 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

people and anti-monopolists on the other — ranged 
in two opposite camps, there was something like 
civil war. The people stayed away from worship, 
refused to pay clerical salaries, and began to per- 
secute and punish their pastors. Dellius fled to 
Boston, and Domine Varick of Long Island to 
Delaware. Varick was afterwards kept prisoner 
in the fort six months, dying ultimately from the 
effects of his ill treatment. It was a new thing in 
Dutch history when the ministers sided with the 
aristocrats against the people ; for, throughout the 
grand story of freedom-loving Holland, people and 
pastors were one as against the privilege and pre- 
rogative. In the Netherlands the Dutch Republic 
was the child of the Church. 

The " upper classes " made a sad mistake in not 
accepting the action of the people, as expressed 
in their Committee of Safety. The over-prudent 
clergy were probably influenced by social reasons, 
as pastors are so apt to be. Leisler was not " an 
illiterate German." He was a prominent merchant 
and church officer, and had been duly chosen by 
the Committee of Safety because of his high char- 
acter and ability. He had American and Conti- 
nental ideas, and foresaw the future. He felt the 
necessity of a union of the colonies, and saw the 
danger from Canada that was imminent over Al- 
bany and Schenectady. He was the first man to 
call a Congress of the colonies to propose unity of 
action and secure mutual strength against France 



JACOB LEISLER 231 

in Canada. The Congress met on Manhattan in 
the spring of 1690. Little was accomplished in 
the military campaign which followed, and by the 
fleet sent to Canada, but the Congress sent colonial 
men thinking of future union. 

Leisler could not write English perfectly or ex- 
press himself easily in this language, but he spoke 
and wrote German, Dutch, and French fluently, 
and had the mind of a statesman. At every step 
of his difficult task Leisler strove to respect the 
forms of law, but, provoked at every turn with the 
violent opposition of the office-holding and money- 
making party, he was forced into doing arbitrary 
acts; yet, on the whole, considering his compli- 
cated tasks, and despite his mistakes, his career 
was noble and unselfish. 

Dilatoriness in the slow-working British Gov- 
ernment in this instance, even as in the time of 
our Revolution and Civil War, was the chief 
cause of the troubles which followed. King Wil- 
liam appointed Sloughter governor. He, getting 
wrecked on the Bermudas, sent Captain Ingoldsby 
three months ahead of him. When the latter ar- 
rived at Manhattan, though without credentials, 
the old councilors of King James quickly gained 
his ear and advised him to demand at once the 
surrender of the fort. For this Ingoldsby had no 
commission, right in law, or authority. His busi- 
ness was to wait. Leisler, like a true soldier and a 
loyal subject, refused his demand. 



232 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

This decision gave Leisler's enemies their mur- 
derous chance. On the arrival of Sloughter, they 
had Leisler arrested. In spite of the efforts of the 
citizens, headed by Rev. Mr. Daille, Leisler and 
his son-in-law, Milborne, were tried on the charge 
of treason and hanged, and their property was 
confiscated. As bravely as John Brown on the 
Charlestown scaffold, as nobly sweet in forgiving 
spirit and as became a true follower of the Victim 
on Calvary, Leisler died, finishing his career as 
a Christian gentleman and far-seeing statesman 
consistently and logically. The execution took 
place beyond the city walls, on the site of the New 
York Tribune building. 

This brutal and lawless act of the British gov- 
ernor was an insult to the people who put Leisler 
into power, and on whose support he had based 
his right to power. Forced into many seemingly 
arbitrary acts by the exigencies of his difficult 
task, Leisler had done the right as God gave him 
to see the right. 

The Leisler affair began a long dispute between 
" the short hairs " and " the swallow tails," the 
minority of privilege and the multitude of plain 
people, to the great injury df religion and order. 
Incidentally it precipitated the massacre at Sche- 
nectady and its destruction in fire and blood. The 
Leislerians and anti-Leislerians were opposed in 
politics, church affairs, and daily life during many 
years. 



JACOB LEISLER 233 

Until our own time Leisler was looked upon as 
a " usurper," and the wrong and injustice done bis 
name are almost as great as those so long inflicted 
on Cromwell, the Anabaptists, and other forerun- 
ners of American safeguarded freedom. Heated 
prejudice has beclouded both fact and truth. Some 
respectable American historians, and the Tory 
writers to a man, and even Englishmen professing 
to be scholars, took this view, which my honored 
predecessor, Dr. A. G. Vermilye, after minute 
research, has completely overthrown. Leisler is 
unanswerably vindicated by the facts, and our 
encyclopaedias need revision. 

Yet England loves fair play. It is now clear 
that the long delay of King William in answering 
Leisler's repeated explanations of his act and ap- 
peals for orders, arose from Dr. Cotton Mather's 
desire to have royal communications made slow, in 
order that New England and its popular rights 
might profit thereby, — though probably without 
intentional purpose of injury to Leisler or the 
people of New York. Soon the whole affair was 
reviewed and the iniquity of the hasty verdict de- 
monstrated. 

In England, Parliament legalized Leisler's ac- 
tion and removed the attainder of treason, and 
Queen Anne restored Leisler's estates to his 
family. Nevertheless, Governor Fletcher (1692- 
98) obeyed neither King nor Parliament, and 
set himself against their authority. In 1698 



234 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Leisler's relatives asked Lord Bellomont, then 
governor, for permission to take up the bodies, 
which were buried near the gallows, and give them 
Christian burial in the Dutch Church edifice on 
Garden Street. Bellomont, " the hurricane reform 
governor," probably out of sincere compassion, 
went to the other extreme in rebuking ostenta- 
tiously his predecessor and in vindicating the 
power of the law. He had the corpses exhumed, 
and although all the ministers and the Consistory 
of the Church were loud in their protests, — shall 
it be said to their shame ? — the bodies of Leisler 
and Milborne were buried under the church floor. 
At midnight twelve hundred people exultantly 
furnished the funeral escort. The attitude of the 
church authorities long alienated the plain people 
from worshiping in the sacred edifices, and it was 
felt that the Domines had no sympathy with the 
feeling of the populace. By her historical origin 
and her long record as champion of the people's 
rights, the Dutch Church has no business ever to 
side with partisans, who represent either wealth 
and power on the one side, or coarseness and turbu- 
lence on the other. Her place is ever as mediator 
and reconciler, and such in later days, true to her 
old traditions, she became, as we shall see. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

New York province, conquered as a fief of the 
English Crown, was a feudatory principality, while 
the proprietor was a duke ; but when the Duke of 
York became sovereign. New York was the Crown's 
land, — a province with provincial government. 
Was, then, the claim of the new owner by right of 
prior discovery, or by conquest ? If the former, then 
the Dutch had been only trespassers on English soil, 
and the English legal system, with all its inherit- 
ances from feudalism, would at once prevail. This 
would make life intolerable to freeborn republi- 
cans. If, on the other hand, the basis of the claim 
was conquest, then the Dutch system of jurispru- 
'dence, which was founded on Roman law, together 
with the especial ordinances of New Netherlaud, 
would remain in force until repealed. The crown 
lawyers of England were to have settled the ques- 
tion, but, as they never did, the people of New 
York solved the problem for themselves. 

A high authority has declared that the " civil 
administration of the Dutch left its permanent im- 
press on the customs, laws, and civilization of New 
York and New Jersey. . . . Dutch jurisprudence 
founded on Roman law was superior to the con- 



236 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

temporary feudal law introduced by the English." 
The Dutch legislation concerning police, property, 
inheritances, and status shows a highly civilized 
state of society. The laws relative to the public 
records of legal instruments were in advance of 
contemporary English law. No principle of primo- 
geniture prevailed. The penal laws of New York 
were always more enlightened and less severe than 
those in other colonies founded by England, — 
a direct result of the earlier Dutch institutions, 
which were more humane. 

At the surrender the English received one of the most 
flourishing colonies in America, possessing a hardy, 
vigorous, and thrifty people, well adapted to all the 
principles of civil and religious freedom. These Dutch 
colonists cheerfully accepted all that was good in Eng- 
lish customs and laws, but stoutly and successfully re- 
sisted what they considered undesirable. This could not 
have been the case if their prior political, religious, and 
social conditions had not been of a superior kind. 

Now began the battle of justice, for the funda- 
mental and ultimate question was left virtually 
undecided until July 4, 1776. 

From the very beginning, the Dutch determined 
to preserve the right, confirmed in 1664, of the 
congregation to elect its own officers. They were 
on the alert against any law that looked to the 
establishment of the Church of England on Ameri- 
can soil. The first English governors, not under- 
standing what kind of people they had to deal 



THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 237 

with, did not comprehend the seriousness of the 
situation. They assumed, contrary to the fact, that 
the Church of England was established in the 
colony of New York. All such trickery was nul- 
lified by Dutch vigilance. 

King Charles II sent " secret instructions " to 
his five commissioners in and about New England, 
and these instructions had a double purpose. These 
royal agents were not only to take the territory 
held by the Dutch, but they were also to get away 
from the New England colonists their charters, or 
to have them so modified that the King's power 
would be so increased that even church officers 
would be under royal appointment. 

Walter van Twiller, returning to Holland, took 
charge in Nijkerk of the education of the Patroon's 
son, Nicholas, born in 1647. At an early age, Nich- 
olas van Kensselaer joined a ring of gay young 
fellows at the Hague, who surrounded Charles 
Stuart. By predicting that Charles would be King, 
Nicholas got into the royal good graces. He crossed 
to America in the suite of Andros, and tried to 
get the ancestral manor, but failed in the courts. 
In July, 1674, the Duke of York recommended 
Nicholas to Governor Andros for a "living" in 
one of the Dutch churches. This meant an invasion 
of the rights of the Dutch Church, as guaranteed 
by treaty, and, besides, Nicholas had no credentials, 
not having received ordination in Holland. The 
full story of the successful resistance of this at- 



238 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tempted invasion by the English State Church is 
told in the Ecclesiastical Records published by 
the State of New York. These show that the claim 
that the Anglican Church was established in New 
York was an absurdity. Andros assumed that it 
was, and this baseless assumption has been often 
repeated, not only by Europeans, but by not a few 
American writers, and even in legal documents on 
our own soil. 

In 1679 the Dutch clergymen formed a Classis, 
— the first in the New World, — and ordained 
Rev. Petrus Tassemacher to the ministry, thus 
exercising their full ecclesiastical rights, and their 
proceedings were approved by the Classis of Am- 
sterdam, no Anglican bishop having anything to 
do with the matter. 

The long battle for full liberty of conscience 
lasted one hundred and thirteen years, from 1664 
to 1777, for the Dutch resisted the claim of the 
Bishop of London to install ministers and school- 
masters in New York province. In 1691 they re- 
jected Governor Sloughter's bill to have ministers 
supported by taxation. Fletcher, his successor, 
pressed the same point, and the Dutch Assembly 
opposed him. The "Ministry Act" of 1693 as 
finally passed was limited to certain parishes in 
only four out of ten counties. It did not estab- 
lish the Anglican Church in New York province. 
Here was a lofty monument on the way to Ameri- 
can freedom. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 239 

As early as December 12, 1686, the Dutch pe- 
titioned for a new church edifice outside the fort 
in Garden Street. On May 11, 1696, after a ten 
years' battle of wits, the British governor, seeing 
that nine tenths of the people were opposed to his 
schemes, found that he had better yield, and the 
charter was signed. The Garden Street Church 
people were given the right in law to manage all 
their own affairs, such as the calling of ministers 
and the induction of them into office, without any 
interference. This was the first royal charter given 
in the Middle States, and it became the model 
for the other charters of the Dutch churches. It 
made the Consistory " a body politic and corpo- 
rate" in fact and name, — "Minister, Elders, and 
Deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church 
of the City of New York." 

The Episcopal people followed the excellent 
example of the Dutch, and they also secured a 
charter, which was issued May 6,* 1696. This 
document, strangely enough, declares no fewer 
than twelve times, but without ground of fact, in 
a single instance of assertion, that the Ministry 
Act of 1693 establishes the Church of England. 
Subsequent legislation was necessary to give legal 
existence to this corporation of Trinity Church. 

Even the Ministry Act of 1693, which was to 
establish the Church of England in some places 
in four out of ten counties of New York, was not 
valid until the King had signed it. This he did 



240 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

not do until nearly four years after it was passed, 
on May 11, 1696, five days after tlie granting of 
Trinity Church Charter. 

Meanwhile Christians were comrades. Despite 
the politics in the case, and while lawyers and 
legislators were busy on the worldly side of the 
matter, the Episcopal and Reformed ministers en- 
joyed the communion of saints. They practiced 
both professional and real politeness, cultivated 
close personal friendship, and worshiped under the 
same roof. During the Revolutionary War, when 
the British made stables as well as hospitals of 
our sacred edifices on Manhattan, as they had 
done in Boston, this former courtesy of lending 
the Dutch churches was not forgotten, but warmly 
reciprocated. In 1779 the vestry of Trinity Church 
passed the following resolution : " It being repre- 
sented that the old Dutch Church is now used as 
a hospital for His Majesty's troops, this corpora- 
tion, impressed with a grateful remembrance of 
the former kindness of the members of that an- 
cient church, do offer the use of St. George's 
Church to that congregation for celebrating divine 
worship." 

The Roman Catholics had a hard time of it in 
New York, until the Revolution gave the people, 
in their capacity of a sovereign State, opportunity 
to reject forever the Old World ideas inherited 
from the Middle Ages. On August 9, 1700, under 
Governor Bellomont, there was passed an " Act 



THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 241 

against Jesuits and Popish Priests." It banished all 
Jesuits, and forbade the exercise of Roman Catho- 
lic worship in the province of New York under 
severe penalties. This law continued in force until 
the American Revolution, when, under American 
ideas and government, all religionists of every 
name were permitted to worship in freedom. 

The Supplementary Act, passed May 19, 1703, 
was founded on those assertions about the Minis- 
try Act, which had no basis in fact. When this 
was put in operation, further trouble loomed up. 
The new act contained a false statement : " The 
Church of England by law established " ! ! Al- 
though English Conformists entertained some high 
expectations, the majority of the people in the pro- 
vince treated this and most of Lord Cornbury's 
legislation as stupid jokes. After his disgraceful 
administration (1702-08), the troubles between 
governor and Assembly nearly ceased, because the 
necessity for amending the Ministry Act almost 
out of shape and meaning was obviated. Queen 
Anne had sequestrated or confiscated the so-called 
"Queen's Farm" for the support of Trinity 
Church. The various bills introduced by the peo- 
ple's representatives for repeal of the Ministry 
Act were indeed vetoed or smothered by the gov- 
ernor or council, and when the Assembly sent its 
committees to know what had become of these 
bills, they received no satisfaction. Nevertheless, 
the people steadily resisted the collection of the 



242 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

tithes. Lawsuits were very common, until it was 
finally demonstrated that the statutes of Great 
Britain had no relation to the colony of New 
York. 

The Dutch and other free churchmen settled 
the question at law, that all Protestant bodies had 
equal rights. 

Cornbury's rascalities had one good effect in 
uniting the people of all nationalities in the pro- 
vince, and in hastening the dawn of American 
liberty. Nevertheless, many disgusted New York- 
ers left to settle in the valleys of the Earitan and 
Millstone, while the more republican government 
of New Jersey drew away people from both New 
England and New York. These, settling in the 
central counties, Middlesex, Somerset, and Hun- 
terdon, made this region the garden of the Dutch 
Church, in which Queen's, or Eutgers College and 
the Theological Seminary rose as lilies of the Eari- 
tan valley. In a word, the Dutch, after they got 
their charters, stood on an impregnable rock and 
won full liberty. Their battle of one hundred and 
thirteen years is one of the most significant epi- 
sodes in American history. Like their ancestors 
in Holland, the Dutch free churchmen "throve 
by persecution, and extracted victory from de- 
feat." 

The Dutch West India Company, a vast trad- 
ing and privateering corporation, owned New York 
for forty-one years. Then for twenty years New 




COLONEL JOHN TAYLOR, OF KUTGKRS COLLEGE 



THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 243 

York was the private property of the Duke of York, 
finally becoming the possession of the Crown 
of England. While New England and Virginia 
were under liberal charters, and other colonies 
had more or less generous proprietary govern- 
ment, the people of the State destined to lead 
all had to fight ceaselessly for the rights of free- 
men. These very difficulties, met and surmounted, 
gave the commonwealth a unique strength. Po- 
litically and educationally. New York was pioneer 
in the ideas and institutions distinctively Ameri- 
can, and became the school of law for the United 
States. In education, "New England gave to 
America the common school system which the 
Puritans found in Holland, but New York led the 
way in developing the public school system on a 
large scale." 

Eeligious freedom was established in New York, 
when Rev. Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian, 
made bold to preach without permission. Indicted 
and tried, he was defended by three of the fore- 
most lawyers in the colony, who were Episcopa- 
lians, but who knew that law was older than thrones, 
and that " secret instructions " from king to gov- 
ernor were not law. This first blow struck in the 
colonies at the royal prerogative was dealt in 1707. 
In New Jersey the lesson was quickly learned 
and followed. When Cornbury read his " instruc- 
tions," he was answered by one of New York's 
great men, speaking for the legislature, "You 



244 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

need not read your instructions to us, they are not 
law." In the next year, 1708, the keynote of all 
the subsequent resistance of the colonies is heard 
in the Resolutions passed by the New York Assem- 
bly, which read as follows : — 

Resolved, that it is and always has been the un- 
questionable right of every man in this colony that he 
hath a perfect and entire property in his goods and 
estates. 

Resolved, that the imposing and levying of any 
moneys upon Her Majesty's subjects in this colony 
under any pretense or color whatsoever, without con- 
sent in General Assembly, is a grievance and a viola- 
tion of the people's property. 

This solemn declaration of the New York Gen- 
eral Assembly was made fifty years before the 
Boston speech of James Otis, or Patrick Henry's 
Richmond oration. After 1708, the Assembly 
granted only an annual supply, the money to be 
collected by their own treasurer and not by the 
Collector of the Crown, and to be disbursed under 
their own direction. Thus the contest between 
right and prerogative continued until the Revolu- 
tion. In spite of all that any governor could do, 
by storm or entreaty, by threat or flattery, by 
vainly showing his " instructions " and talking 
of his " honor pledged to their enforcement," the 
people held to the ancient principle, so clearly 
enunciated in the Netherlands in 1477, — "no tax- 
ation without consent." The contest ended by the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 245 

surrender of the Governor instead of the Assem- 
bly, the royal executive promising in 1715 to 
do as the people's representatives directed. The 
result was brought about through the form of 
exchange commonly called a " deal," for the Gov- 
ernor and the Crown opposed the naturalization of 
- all foreigners in the colony, while the New York- 
ers desired it. These new foreigners were the 
Swiss and Germans from the Rhine Palatinate. 
Another episode, with a meaning that looked to 
July 4, 1776, was the trial and acquittal of the 
German printer, Zenger, which settled the ques- 
tion of the freedom of speech and of the press in 
the right way. 



CHAPTER XXV 

INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 

Though we Americans speak the English lan- 
guage, our country is not a New England, or a 
New Britain, but a New Europe. Our race gained 
a thousand years of potency by crossing the Atlan- 
tic. Old World ideas, unless modified, will not 
work on our continent. Yet, " above all nations is 
humanity." 

Dutchmen in America, like men of other strains 
and stocks, face to face with new problems, found 
themselves compelled to cut apron strings, and 
firmly but reverently, first ask and then demand 
of Patria to grant her sons freedom to grapple 
with new tasks in their own way. That was the 
meaning of the troubles and differences which 
came into the eighteenth-century Dutch Church. 
This typical Netherlands institution and survival 
in America is conservative, above all others, of 
things distinctively Dutch. 

In 1739 seventy-five years had passed since the 
English conquest, and two generations had grown 
up. Only a few octogenarians among the Dutch 
Churchmen had seen Patria. Most of the people 
spoke the Dutch language, but were loyal to the 
British King, yet from a sense of duty rather than 



INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 247 

from affection or admiration, and increasingly 
they were of the '' Continental " spirit. The very 
attempt to serve two masters made them eager to 
rest their supreme loyalty in that law of safe- 
guarded liberty, which, older than thrones, is com- 
mon to the two countries which were one in love of 
order and progress. Hence, the people of Dutch 
descent in the middle colonies were unusually 
strong Americans. 

The common English or insular term for all 
people of Teutonic stock was " Dutch," a word 
meaning literally, the peoples. The Netherlanders 
were spoken of as"Neder" or "Low" Dutch, 
the Germans being " High Dutch." The reference 
being to geographical, not moral conditions, the 
Enoflish were the lowest of all three levels. As 
English became increasingly the language of New 
York and accurate knowledge of Holland faded 
away, both New Yorkers and New Englanders, 
who were copyists of the English, sank to shame- 
ful depths of ignorance concerning Patria and the 
Netherlanders. 

It was increasingly felt by the Dutch Church- 
men that they must attend to church business 
themselves, and have student candidates and min- 
isters raised up on this side of the Atlantic. Hap- 
pily the Classis of Amsterdam was a liberal-minded 
body, and the Americans were urged to form a 
Coetus, or Association, as had been done already in 
Surinam. On September 5, 1737, seven ministers 



248 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

met in New York and drew up a plan to heal 
divisions, give effective counsel, promote unity, 
and attract ministers from Europe to America. 

While the popular hunger and thirst for educa- 
tion increased, there was constant fear lest the 
British Government should force a state church 
on the people and establish a sectarian college, just 
as in England the two older universities had been 
closed to all but members of one form of Chris- 
tianity. This and the heterogeneousness of the 
population made the growth of systematic educa- 
tion in New York a slow one. 

William Livingstone had warned the Dutch that 
" all pretenses of the political church people at 
sisterhood and identity were fallacious and hypo- 
critical." Hence the course of Domine Freling- 
huysen, who called a meeting of the Ccetus for 
May 30, 1755, to take action concerning an Ameri- 
can Classis and the university for the Dutch 
Church. After eleven years of debate, the Ameri- 
can Classis, in 1766, obtained the charter. As 
there was a King's College in New York City, 
this one in New Jersey was called Queen's, and 
is now Rutgers College. 

One argument for an independent Dutch Church 
in America was that an oath of allegiance to Great 
Britain was inconsistent with obedience to the 
foreign State Church of Holland. Yet there were 
other elements entering in to prepare both Dutch 
and English to sever their bonds with Europe. 



INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 249 

It was difficult then, however, as it is for some 
of the old Dutchmen of to-day in Michigan and 
Iowa, to understand how the omnipotent God can 
be trusted to reveal truth in any language but the 
Dutch, or in any theology but that of Dordrecht 
and the seventeenth century. How, also, sound 
catechetics can be taught in English is still, to 
some fresh from the turf of Patria, a mystery 
passing their understanding. Nevertheless, there 
were loyal Dutch Churchmen on Manhattan will- 
ing to trust the Almighty and the English lan- 
guage, and in 1763 they called the Rev. Archi- 
bald Laidlie, a graduate of Edinburgh University, 
and then pastor at Flushing in Zealand. The in- 
troduction of English preaching in New York City 
resulted in a lawsuit, besides sad losses of temper, 
money, and membership, but the English side won. 
About the year 1770 Laidlie translated the Hei- 
delberg Catechism into English, and the excellence 
and the grace of his work may be seen to this day. 
He was made S. T. D., by the College of New 
Jersey, in 1770. While in exile from the city, on 
account of the Revolution, he died of consumption. 

The Rev. Lambertus de Ronde, a genuine '^ Con- 
tinental" patriot, had in 1763 made an English 
version of the Heidelberg Catechism, and was the 
author of the first book in the English language 
published by a member of the Reformed Dutch 
Church in America, — a manual of theology and 
preparation for Communion. When driven from 



250 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Manhattan by the British occupation of New 
York in 1776, he preached in the churches farther 
north in the Hudson River Valley. When " the 
people of the United States " had their National 
Government in 1787, de Ronde translated into 
Dutch the Constitution of the United States, and 
when this instrument had been adopted by six 
states, the Dutch version was printed in 1788, 
and published by order of the federal committee 
in the city of Albany. It had a tremendous in- 
fluence among older men of the State, backing 
Alexander Hamilton, and securing New York for 
the Union and Constitution. 

Meanwhile, the two parties in the Dutch Church 
squabbled together, and sometimes like saints who 
" serve the Lord as if the devil were in them," 
but the peacemaker was being raised up, who was 
to grapple with the difficulties and bring order 
out of chaos. 

John H. Livingston, born in Poughkeepsie in 
1746 and graduated at Yale College in 1762, was 
the bearer of the olive branch. He spent the 
winter of 1765-66 on Manhattan, and was much 
in the society of Domine Laidlie. Then, on May 
12, 1766, like our own Motley of later days, he 
sailed to Holland, for the sources and the masters, 
and entered Utrecht University. He was the last 
of the American youth who went to Holland for 
the study of theology. 

Thirty-four ministers and over one hundred 



INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 251 

churches composed the Reformed Dutch Church 
when Livingston returned, on September 3, 1770. 
A preacher, a scholar, a statesman of the highest 
ability, he, as soon as affairs were ripe, proposed 
a plan of union which should unite all parties. A 
convention was called for October 15, 1771, to 
establish a firm and enduring church constitution. 
Twenty-two ministers and twenty-five elders, re- 
presenting in all thirty-four churches, were present 
at the meeting. Of these, half a dozen had origi- 
nally been French and about twenty German Re- 
formed, most of whom were gradually Hollandized 
and ultimately Anglicized as to language. In these 
one hundred churches, during the century and 
a half of colonial dependence, one hundred and 
twelve ministers had officiated, of whom thirty- 
four were living at this union of the two parties. 
This Dutch Church Congress in 1771, com- 
posed of the children of several European nations, 
the first of its kind in America, was but a prelude 
to that of the gathering of the fifty-five Conti- 
nental delegates in Carpenter's Hall in Philadel- 
phia in 1774. It certainly proved to be a powerful 
incentive to American freedom and law-abiding 
resistance to King George's revolution, which he 
and Parliament forced on the colonies. As simple 
fact, every one of the Dutch friends of ecclesi- 
astical independence belonged also to the " Con- 
tinental" party of freedom in 1776, and through- 
out the war. The Dutch Church was a unit in 



252 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

resisting British attempts to overthrow American 
liberty, though there were many Dutch Tories. 

At a second convention called, according to ar- 
rangement, June 16, 1772, twenty-six ministers 
and forty-three elders from one hundred churches 
were present, and almost every one subscribed to 
the Plan of Union. When they heard read the 
letter, from the mother Classis in Holland, sent 
to the Convention, dated January 14, 1771, they 
found to the joy of all that their Plan of Union 
was approved. 

The written constitution, which grew out of 
this Dutch Church Congress, is a notable docu- 
ment in American history, and a splendid speci- 
men of a republican and representative frame of 
government. It gave a model for the national 
Constitution of 1787. 

The General Synod thus created, which met 
triennially, took on a decidedly American form 
in being not only conventional but representative, 
that [is, consisting of all ministers in the Church 
and an elder from each congregation. 

Article LIX is especially worthy of mention, 
as showing that attitude of the Church, in regard 
to the servitude of Africans, which gave the Re- 
formed Dutch Church in the nineteenth century 
its unique position throughout the whole slavery 
agitation and the Civil War. " In the Church there 
is no difference between bond and free, but all 
are one in Christ. Whenever, therefore, slaves or 



INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 253 

black people shall be baptized, or become mem- 
bers in full communion of the Church, they shall 
be admitted to equal privileges with all other 
members of the same standing ; their infant chil- 
dren shall be entitled to baptism, and in every re- 
spect be treated with the same attention that the 
children of white or free parents are in the Church. 
Any minister, who, upon any pretense, shall re- 
fuse to admit slaves or their children to the privi- 
leges to which they are entitled, shall, complaint 
being exhibited and proved, be severely repri- 
manded by the Classis to which he belongs." 

Thus the Church that had already welcomed 
the red man to font and altar showed brother- 
hood to the negroes. So it came to pass that on 
scores of old record books of the Dutch churches 
are hundreds of names of members who were 
black brethren, baptized, and communicants, and 
right nobly did many a Simon the Niger carry his 
cross. A permanent feature of the Dutch congre- 
gations was the devout colored worshiper who sat 
in the gallery. On baptismal and Communion 
Sabbaths, the children of the slaves, or the free 
blacks, or the new immigrants from the Indies or 
the Dark Continent, stood up, with their white 
masters in the flesh to be brethren with them in 
the Spirit, to take the same vows, and answer to 
the same questions of loyalty to a common Sav- 
iour and obedience to the church rules, "Yes, 
truly with all my heart." Before the baptismal 



254 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

font, the dusky fathers and mothers held their 
babes for the same waters of covenant and conse- 
cration, making like promises, and receiving like 
guarantee of spiritual culture as the highest in the 
land. 

No body of Christians on the North American 
continent entered more profoundly in mind, or 
realized more fully in practice, the spiritual 
democracy of believers than the people of the 
Keformed Dutch Church. The names of pick- 
aninnies and papooses, adult slaves and warriors, 
servants, " proselytes," black, red, and white, on the 
pages of Dutch Church registers sparkle among 
the undying glories of American colonial life. It 
was as though the negatives of those photographs 
of primeval Christianity, taken by the slave and 
" prisoner of Jesus Christ " at Ephesus, Corinth, 
or Rome, in the first century, had been developed 
and enlarged in the sunshine of the Western world. 
The prayer " Sun of Divine Justice, shine on us," 
with the added " et Occidentem " (the West), was 
throughout every generation, from the days of the 
first Manhattan congregation, gloriously and re- 
peatedly fulfilled. In the Reformed Church, by 
excellence, Ethiopia held her gift-laden hands unto 
God, and despite all human infirmities Salem's 
ebony sons and daughters adorned the doctrine 
of their Saviour. 

The story of New Netherland may be written in 
the history of the various towns making up the 



INDEPENDENCE FROM HOLLAND 255 

colony, province, and states of New York and New 
Jersey, but none in the whole country probably 
suffered worse than New Brunswick. Later, in 
place of the burnt college, the trustees built a two- 
story frame house, painted white, without a cupola 
or belfry, facing the north. In true Dutch style, it 
was set with its gable end toward George Street. 

During the first troublous but fruitful period, 
" Old Rutgers," "on the banks of the old Raritan," 
graduated over sixty young men, ten of whom be- 
came ministers. Others were leaders in politics 
and science. The " new " building, still called 
Queen's College, not reared until 1809, was 
planned by the architect of the City Hall in New 
York. Dr. Livingston, appointed in 1784 and serv- 
ing elsewhere, came to New Brunswick and opened 
the theological seminary in 1810, possibly the first 
in America. In 1863 the State College of New 
Jersey, for the benefit of agriculture and mechanic 
arts, was founded, and in 1865 was organized as a 
department in Rutgers College. 

Men are influenced by precedents, and gladly 
receive the lessons of experience, while profiting 
by the mistakes and successes of others. This Plan 
of Union, by men of the four Middle States, with 
its masterly written constitution of 1771 power- 
fully influenced the Constitutional Convention of 
the United States in 1787. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE DUTCH DOMINES IN THE KEVOLUTION 

The period from 1764 to 1804 gave the Dutch 
Domines a fivefold trial of intellect, character, tact, 
tongue, and temper, such as mortal beings are 
rarely called upon to undergo. The manner in 
which they conducted themselves and the triumphs 
which they completed show the sterling quality 
of their manhood, which was worthy of the best 
traditions of their race. They were compelled to 
change their speech for both conversation and 
formal discourse. They faced dissensions and dif- 
ficulties within their own congregations. Problems, 
social, political, and linguistic, confronted them 
daily, compelling continual nice and repeated ad- 
justment. 

Hardly were they settled in their new loyalty to 
Great Britain than they were compelled to re- 
nounce it. Being of the most intensely "Conti- 
nental " spirit, they, with their fellow Americans, 
must needs face the storm of the Revolution, which 
divided households into Tories and Patriots. Lest 
they should not have enough discipline of tongue, 
temper, body, and spirit, it pleased Providence to 
transfer quickly the seat of war from the Eastern 
colonies into the very garden of the Dutch churches 



DUTCH DOMINES IN THE REVOLUTION 257 

in New York and New Jersey. Nevertheless, the 
threefold battle of loyalties, languages, and new 
conditions was bravely and successfully fought out. 

After the British left Boston, the territory of the 
Dutch Church became the seat of war. Her church 
buildings were desecrated, used as hospitals, sta- 
bles, barracks, or set on fire. Most of her minis- 
ters, driven from their homes, fled only to rouse the 
patriotic ardor and inspire the martial courage of 
the people. Some of them were strikingly promi- 
nent, and the British tried hard to capture them. 

We will look at some of these men famous in 
local tradition. 

Rev. Johannes Schureman, American-born, but 
licensed in Holland, is the hero in Murdoch's 
book, " The Dutch Dominie of the Catskills." He 
had the traditional build of one of Hendrik Hud- 
son's sailors of the Half Moon, being short and 
plump, with a powerful voice. Like almost every 
one of the friends of the Reformed Church's inde- 
pendence of Holland, he was a true Continental. 
Set over two large congregations in Ulster County, 
his life was very laborious, for he had all the noble 
disadvantages of a good character, in being willing 
to serve all, and he was also a doctor of medicine. 
In his mind, the interests of religion and freedom 
were one. As strong as he was courageous, he went 
through the wilderness alone, but in faith and with 
his musket primed and powder dry. He would 
probably not have been taken alive, and the Brit- 



258 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ish knew it. They were never able to capture 
him. 

Domine Eilardis Westerloo, born at Groningen, 
1738, reached the New World and settled at Albany 
in 1760. Wise, conciliating, and peaceful, in the 
hottest period of the church strife — that is, when 
friction between the Old World and the New World 
notions was at flaming heat — he gained the re- 
spect and confidence of both parties. When the flag 
of the thirteen red and white stripes, so very much 
like his ancestral banner of liberty, was unfurled 
in 1775, he at once ranged himself and his people 
under its folds. When mighty Burgoyne and his 
terrible host were moving down from Canada to- 
ward Albany, fear was in all hearts; for General 
Philip Schuyler — a Dutch Church deacon — had 
not yet brought to completion the work which was 
to issue in the escort of Burgoyne as prisoner, 
within the palisades and down Pearl Street, into 
Albany, but Domine Westerloo kept his church 
open and cheered his people, even till Yorktown 
closed the campaigns. When the work of fighting 
Hessians and redcoats was over, he grappled with 
the English language and preached in the vernacu- 
lar of the new nation. Domine Westerloo wel- 
comed Washington, when, as President, he visited 
Albany and Schenectady. Westerloo wrote Latin 
with greater purity than President Stiles of Yale 
College had ever known. 

How very different from the Dutchmen on the 



DUTCH DOMINES IN THE REVOLUTION 259 

stage, in comic opera, and in Irving's caricatures, 
were the real people ! During the French and In- 
dian War, the chaplain of a Massachusetts regi- 
ment dined with Domine Vrooman at Schenectady, 
July 4, 1758. He drew a pen picture of his host, 
then thirty years old, " in height six feet four and 
a half inches, and every way large in proportion. 
. . . [He] explains a text in the morning and 
preaches divinity in the afternoon. The people 
here attend their public religious services with 
great devotion." There was no handsomer man or 
more striking clerical figure in the Revolution than 
that of Domine Barent Vrooman, who served his 
people from 1753 to 1784. He was the great-grand- 
son of the emigrant Hendrik, who, with his two sons, 
Adam and Bartholomew, and the wife and infant 
of Adam, were slain in the massacre of 1690. 

Schenectady, during the Revolution, was a 
palisaded town, enlarged to hold the refugees of 
the Mohawk Valley, and many of the five hundred 
widows and two thousand orphans of Try on County, 
which Brant and Butler and their Indians and 
Tories had made, dwelt here for safety. The Dom- 
ine's charity was proverbial. Between his Bible 
and the basket of supplies on his arm, his mem- 
ory is still green in "Old Dorp." The right 
wing of Sullivan's expedition of 1779, Clinton's 
brigade of three New York regiments, composed 
largely of Dutchmen, to crush savagery and open 
the Empire State to civilization, assembled here 



260 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

and marched thence through the Susquehanna, 
Chemung, and Genesee valleys. 

Washington did not lean upon a reed when he 
depended upon the sturdy patriotism and loyalty 
of " the Dutch Belt," extending from Albany to 
Manhattan, and up the Earitan valley towards the 
Delaware. In the darkest hours, the Father of his 
Country found his safest asylum among the New 
Jersey Dutchmen. The river margins of the Hud- 
son, llackensack, Passaic, and Raritan are rich in 
authentic traditions of heroism and romance, for 
the whole weight of the Dutch Church and people 
was found on the side of true republicanism. Sev- 
eral of their Domines, whose thrilling adventures 
must be passed by for lack of space, were person- 
ally known to Washington, for whom by heredi- 
tary training they were prepared. None understood 
more clearly the meaning of the American Revolu- 
tion and the meaning of independence ; for, as 
John Adams said in 1771, " the originals of the 
twt) republics [Dutch and American] are so 
much alike that the history of one seems like a 
transcript from that of the other." The Dutch 
Jerseymen braced up the backbone of the Conti- 
nental cause at its most trying time, when in the 
valleys of the Raritan and Delaware the fires of 
war burned most fiercely. 

New Jersey, destined to be the campground of 
armies and the scene of one hundred battles or 
skirmishes, was well prepared for the coming war 



DUTCH DOMINES IN THE REVOLUTION 2G1 

storm. Two months before the battle of Bunker 
Hill the Dutch Church appointed a day of humili- 
ation and prayer. Iler pulpits rang with stirring 
appeals, for all the Domines and people were in 
hearty sympathy with the cause of freedom. Two 
days before the Declaration of Independence New 
Jersey asserted her statehood. 

Queen's College at New Brunswick, hardly on 
its feet before the storm of war broke, adjourned 
at once to the battlefield, for professors and stu- 
dents enlisted, as a body, in the Continental army. 
The first regular graduate was Simeon De Witt. 
Being a man of science and the ablest surveyor in 
the colonies, he was made geographer of the army, 
and rose to be a staff officer with General Wash- 
ington. He was present at Saratoga and Yorktown, 
two of the greatest events of the Kevolutionary 
War, when whole armies were surrendered. For 
the event, third in importance, the expedition of 
General John Sullivan in 1779, which by destroy- 
ing the Iroquois Confederacy and preventing any 
further rear attacks on the frontier made York- 
town possible, De Witt made the maps. Later, as 
Surveyor-General of the State of New York, he 
opened its forests to civilization, founded the city 
of Ithaca, prepared the way for the United States 
Weather Bureau, and laid the foundation of our 
national land-system of measures and registration, 
— a pretty fair record for Rutgers's first graduate. 
He is immortalized, both by Cooper in his novel, 



262 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

"The Chainbearer," and by a blundering poet 
who dubbed him " Godfather of the newly chris- 
tened West," in allusion to the classical names 
in New York, with which De Witt had nothing 
to do. 

Of the two New Jersey colleges, one, Princeton, 
was destined to have a battle fought at its doors, 
and the other, Kutgers, to have its campus trod- 
den by the patriot army in retreat. 

One of the Dutch parsons whom King George's 
redcoats would have hanged, if they could have 
drawn a rope around his neck, was Domine Jacob 
Rutsen Hardenberg, brother of Washington's 
staff officer. His church was at Raritan, New 
Jersey. He usually slept with a musket at his 
side. His public zeal so angered the Tories, that 
Colonel Simcoe once organized an expedition of 
the Queen's Rangers to capture him. When they 
arrived at his church, and found their bird flown, 
they burnt the building to the ground. In the 
Raritan valley the perfume of his name and his 
wife's is as an unfading flower. 

Other famous Domines, whose patriotic voices, 
as trumpets of freedom, led young men to enlist 
in the Continental armies, were Du Bois, Leydt, 
Goetschius, Foering, Romeyn, van Bunschoten, 
etc., whose biographies are given in Corwin's 
" Manual of the Reformed Church." Van Bun- 
schoten left what is perhaps the oldest educational 
endowment in money given by a native American. 



DUTCH DOMINES IN THE REVOLUTION 263 

Several of these ministers were well known to 
Washington. 

These Americans of Dutch descent were, in 
word and act, in full harmony with their ancestral 
record and that of the men of the contemporaneous 
Kepublic of the United Netherlands. At St. Eu- 
statius, in the West Indies, on the 16th of No- 
vember, 1776, the Dutch governor, Johannes de 
Graeff, after reading the American Declaration of 
Independence saluted our flag of thirteen stripes. 
Between 1775 and 1783, half of our war supplies 
imported from Europe came from this island. 
The Dutch of Patria sent us soldiers and offi- 
cers of merit, struck medals in our honor, re- 
ceived John Adams, acknowledged our independ- 
ence, became our allies, and made us a loan of 
money, which, when paid up, principal and inter- 
est, amounted to fourteen millions of dollars ; and 
then, under the auspices of the Holland Land 
Company, this same money was invested to de- 
velop four million acres of the wild lands of west- 
ern New York and Pennsylvania. *' In love of 
liberty and bravery in the defense of it, she," said 
Benjamin Franklin, in speaking of Holland, "has 
been our great example." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 

The one institution surviving from New Neth- 
erland, the depository of its authentic history 
and the incarnation of its spirit, is " the Reformed 
Church in America." It comprises about half a 
million people in seven hundred congregations, 
chiefly in eastern New York and northern New 
Jersey, in the Hudson, Mohawk, and Raritan val- 
leys, and in Michigan, Iowa, and Nebraska, with 
its chief seats of education at New Brunswick, 
New Jersey, and Holland, Michigan. 

Reviewing the history of the Church from 1628 
to 1792, we note the successive steps : (1) emi- 
gration from Holland (1628-64) ; (2) resist- 
ance to English attempts to establish the church 
of a small minority upon a vast majority (1664- 
1708) ; (3) the conflict within, between dead 
formulas and a higher moral life (1708-54) ; 
and (4) finally, the struggle to harmonize Old 
World ideas and New World necessities, including 
the change of language from Dutch to English 
(1754-71), resulting in the mastery of the Eng- 
lish language and the establishment of a college 
and school of theology. 

Hardly had the strife of tongues ceased and the 




THE DUTCH IX THE ARCTIC SEAS 




WHERE OUR FLAG WAS H 




riET HEIX CAPTURING THE SPANISH SILVER FLEET 




T SALUTED. ST. EUSTATIUS 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 265 

new work of peace begun, when the storm of the 
British invasion broke. Its worst devastations, 
from 1776 to 1782, were in the field of the Dutch 
churches, scattering ministers and congregations, 
and destroying many edifices. 

When "revolution" from without had been suc- 
cessfully overcome and civil liberty safeguarded, 
there came with independence new problems and 
responsibilities. Now the Dutch Church must be- 
come missionary. The call from the wilderness 
was loud and great. Piteous appeals for preach- 
ers and teachers came from the regions of the Del- 
aware and Susquehanna rivers in New York, and 
from Canada, Virginia, and even Kentucky. The 
first outpost home -missionary church, organized 
in 1794, was on the line of Sullivan's expedition 
of 1779, at Chenango Forks, near Binghamton. 
Union College, which grew out of the Schenec- 
tady Academy, was founded in 1785, chiefly by 
the efforts of the people of the Dutch Church in 
northern New York. 

Between 1768 and 1800, New Jersey Dutchmen, 
from Bergen and Somerset counties, moved west- 
ward in a caravan of one hundred and fifty fami- 
lies and seven hundred souls to Conewago and 
Hanover, near the battlefield of Gettysburg. There 
they built churches and made farms. Thence, with 
the restless pioneer spirit, two lines of settlers 
moved, the one to the Genesee Country, and the 
other to Kentucky. In the New York lake region. 



266 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

Dutch churches rose at Sempronius, Ovid, Varna, 
Benton, Owasco, Brookton, Farmer, Geneva, and 
other places, and were fed for a while by streams 
of emigration. 

To Kentucky the children of Dutch ancestors 
moved westward in 1780 and 1793, driving their 
cattle before them. From the upper Ohio, they 
floated down the river to Maysville, and then 
marched to Harrodsburg and settled there. From 
this point, as from a hive, colonies swarmed off 
into southern Ohio and Indiana. The descendants 
of these Dutchmen may be found all through the 
West, even to Alaska, and a few of them have 
reached national fame. 

Some emigration took place from Holland to 
America after the peace of 1783. When the debt 
of the United States was paid to the Dutch bank- 
ers, who had made the loan of millions of dollars 
to help us, the recipients preferred to keep their 
money invested in America. The Holland Land 
Company was formed by Amsterdam capitalists, 
and nearly four million acres were bought in New 
York and Pennsylvania, and opened to settlers on 
easy terms. On the map of New York suggestive 
Dutch names, such as Tromp, Barneveld, Link- 
laen, Scriba, Busti, Cazenovia, de Euyter, Holland 
Patent, and Batavia, tell the story of pioneer ac- 
tivity in the days of the Batavian Republic. The 
city on Buffalo Creek was laid out as New Amster- 
dam, and its avenues named after Dutch worthies. 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 2G7 

With this enterprise may be linked the honored 
names of Harm Jan Huidekoper and his descend- 
ants. Settling at Meadville, Pennsylvania, they 
made this place the centre of refining and educa- 
tional influences, of which the Meadville Theo- 
logical School is a noble expression. Huidekoper's 
name became the synonym of integrity. When 
the more liberal phases of religion stirred men's 
minds, and men asked what the Unitarian form 
of faith was, it passed into a proverb, " Nobody 
knows but Huidekoper, and he won't tell." 

When also, late in the eighteenth century, the 
triumphant republican ideas of the United States, 
spreading to Europe, occasioned disturbances in 
the Old World and a revolution in Holland, two 
leaders on the popular side, after suffering a de- 
feat more nominal than real, made their way to 
America. They were Colonel Adam G. Mappa and 
Adrian van der Kemp, who settled at Barneveld, 
a few miles north of Utica, later called Trenton, 
and now postally renamed as at first. Mappa be- 
came agent of the Holland Land Company, and 
van der Kemp one of the assistant Justices of the 
Ulster County Court. In July, 1792, van der 
Kemp made a journey on horseback to Buffalo. 
With the hereditary instinct of a Netherlander, as 
well as by the eye of faith and science, foreseeing 
the Erie Canal, he then wrote to his friend Mappa 
as follows : — 

"See here, then, an easy communication by 



268 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

water carriage open between the most distant part 
of this extensive commonwealth ; see the markets 
of New York, Albany, and Schenectady glutted 
with the produce of the West and the comforts of 
the South distributed with a liberal hand among 
the agriculterers of this new country." He sees 
also old Fort Schuyler (Utica) " transformed into 
an opulent mercantile city." The " tomahawk and 
scalping knife shall be replaced by the chisel and 
pencil of the artist and the wigwam by marble 
palaces. . . . Go on then and dig canals through 
the western district. . . . Give me the republican 
wand of Capius Popilius, and I will go to the 
water nymph Erie and trace a beautiful canal, 
through which her ladyship shall be compelled to 
pay of her tribute to the ocean through the Genesee 
Country." 

Thirty years later, in 1822, Governor De Witt 
Clinton wrote to van der Kemp, his Dutch friend, 
whom he called " the most learned man in 
America," " Your letter to Colonel Mappa on the 
canal written in 1792 is really a curiosity. It gives 
you the original invention of the Erie route." 
Three years later, in 1825, the waters of the Great 
Lakes and the Atlantic were united. 

A refined society of cultivated Netherlanders 
grew up in Barneveld, and here or near by, per- 
haps, Fenimore Cooper found the originals of 
some of his pictures of culture in that New York 
wilderness, at which critics have laughed, declaring 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 269 

them overdrawn, but which existed in fact. The 
Tank Memorial Home, at Oberlin, Ohio, com- 
memorates a husband and wife, the latter a 
daughter of the gallant General and Baron van 
Boetzelaer, who in 1793 defended the fort at Wil- 
lemstad against the French invaders of the Neth- 
erlands. When, at the death of the old lady, 
her linen, plate, miniatures, books, and household 
effects were sold, the revelation to the average 
American of the riches and elegant taste of a re- 
fined Dutch home was impressive. 

Even though possessing but wrecks of their for- 
tune, few libraries in the country excelled in qual- 
ity those of the two refugees, Mappa and van der 
Kemp, the latter of whom corresponded with the 
great men of our country, Washington, Jefferson, 
John Adams, and the leading lights of Harvard 
College, which in 1820 gave him the degree of 
LL.D. He had been the friend and companion of 
such Hollanders among those who were our friends 
during our struggle for independence as Dr. Cal- 
koens and Professor Jean Luzac, and especially of 
the great Baron Joan Derek van de Capellen. Best 
of all, it was van der Kemp who, besides getting 
from Holland precious documents, translated into 
English the early records of New Netherland and 
the Dutch West India Company. In his cottage at 
Olden Barneveld, he put into English forty vol- 
umes, which, with the originals, were safely deliv- 
ered in Albany, and formed the basis of the Doc 



270 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

umentary History of New York printed by order 
of the legislature. 

The second large emigration of New Netherland- 
ers to America took place more than two centuries 
after the first, not to New York, but into or near 
the upper Mississippi Valley, and was in this wise. 

When " the Dutch took Holland," and drove out 
their French oppressors and marched to Water- 
loo, a constitutional monarchy, which fulfilled the 
hopes of the Republic, gave new unity to the Dutch 
nation. Nevertheless, King William I, who came 
into power in 1816, changed the old democratic and 
representative government of the national Church 
to one that was bureaucratic, and employed cav- 
alry, infantry, and artillery to enforce his will. 

Affairs came to a crisis in 1834. Then, like the 
Pilgrim Fathers of 1620, Dutchmen left their na- 
tive land for freedom of conscience. When the emi- 
gration had taken on large proportions, the alarmed 
Dutch Government secured the abdication of old 
King William, and persecution at once ceased. 

Meanwhile the Domines, van Raalte, Scholte, 
and others, led colonies by way of Manhattan and 
the Mohawk Valley to Michigan, or from New 
Orleans, up the Mississippi to Iowa. These peo- 
ple came not as mere emigrants. They were true 
colonists, and made homes and became Americans. 
They came largely as churches with their pastors, 
and they named the new settlements after their 
old homes. Hence the Dutch names of so many 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 271 

localities in our Western States. Parts of the map 
of Michigan read like transcripts from Queen 
Wilhelmina's kingdom. Amid lonely forests, wild 
beasts, malaria, and homesickness, they perse- 
vered. The city of refuge, to which the primitive 
Christians from Jerusalem fled, when destroyed 
by the Romans, was Pella, and the new home in 
Iowa was called after it. 

Novel and discouraging experiences met the 
newcomers. Besides frosts in August, fires, floods, 
and wild cats, there were amusing contacts with 
birds and beasts, human and equine nature. When 
a Frisian gentleman-farmer, proud of his know- 
ledge of horses, landed at Keokuk, he bought a 
wagon, picked out and harnessed to it a fine pair 
of animals, and then, loading his goods and family 
aboard, gave in Dutch the usual signal to the 
horses to move. The dumb brutes did not even 
whisk their ears. He spoke louder and more 
clearly. Still they were deaf and immovable. 
Horrified to think that after all his expert know- 
ledge he might have been deceived in his purchase, 
but'' disdaining to use a whip or pull the check- 
rein, he patted the horses' necks and whispered 
more coaxing words in his vernacular. Not a hoof 
was lifted. Suddenly a native appeared and took 
in the whole situation. He knew that these horses 
understood the Keokuk dialect. At once he cried, 
" Get up! " Thereupon, the team moved so swiftly, 
that their Frisian owner had difficulty in recover- 



272 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

ing his property. His first lesson in English was 
in the variety understood by horses. 

In April, 1848, the Michigan Domines and con- 
sistories united as a Reformed Dutch Church, and 
at Albany, in April, 1850, " the ancient place of 
treaties," — hallowed alike to Iroquois and Dutch- 
men, — these modern Pilgrim Fathers came to 
make a new " covenant of Corlaer " and to 
" brighten the silver chain " of friendship with 
their brethren in the American Reformed Church. 

These modern Pilgrim Fathers and their fam- 
ilies constitute nearly one third of the Reformed 
Church in America, while the " Christian Re- 
formed " people also thrive and do a noble work 
in developing the Republic. Perhaps the greatest 
concentration of modern Netherlanders and their 
descendants is in Grand Rapids, the " furniture 
capital" of the United States. They are, however, 
numerous in Chicago, all over Michigan, in Iowa, 
Dakota, at Pater son. New Jersey, and in a few 
other places. Possibly a million Netherlanders, in 
character above reproach, since the forties, have 
come to the United States. 

In the world's broad harvest field, and for the 
uplift of humanity in other lands, the Americans 
of Dutch descent have wrought nobly. The Dutch 
were the first to study the religions, languages, 
and civilizations of the Far East, and the Nether- 
lands Reformed Church was for a time the mis- 
sionary agent of all Protestant Europe. By herself 




SIMEOX DE WITT. SURVEYOR-GENERAL OF NEW YORK STATE 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 273 

alone, she was the pioneer on a large scale of the 
modern enterprises of foreign missions, notably in 
Formosa, Java, and the East Indies. Her daugh- 
ter, the brave little Reformed Church in America, 
had her attention early drawn to the cradle con- 
tinent of Asia, to which the debt of Occidental 
Christianity and civilization is inexpressibly great. 
Some of the most successful Christian missions in 
India, China, Japan, and in the Malay and Moslem 
worlds have been founded and steadily supported 
by the Reformed Church in America, and mighty 
has been her part in the educational conquest of 
Asia. In Japan, as shown in the biographies of 
" Verbeck of Japan " and of Brown " A Maker 
of the New Orient," it is perfectly safe to say that 
no body of Christians has had more to do with 
the first sowing of the seed of science and the re- 
making of that nation into a modern world-power. 
As is the rule with the faithful toilers for man, 
the best results for the race begin after the death 
of the toilers. 

In our day the schools, hospitals, and churches 
of American Dutchmen are maintained by a noble 
force of highly educated men and women in India, 
China, Japan, and Arabia. These scholars have 
created a new literature in the language of the 
people of these lands. In the translation of the 
Book of Books into the tongues of old and ad- 
vanced civilizations, they have been pioneers and 
leaders. In addition. Dr. Van Dyke, direct de- 



274 THE STORY OF NEW NETHERLAND 

scendant of the famous Indian fighter in Kieft's 
time, completed in a style of elegant scholarship 
the Arabic version of the Holy Scriptures, which 
can be read by one hundred and thirty millions of 
the human race. 

The nations of Europe are gradually coming to 
accept the American doctrine, of which the Re- 
formed Dutch Church was so early an exponent, 
namely, that Indians, Africans, and the Asiatic 
peoples exist, not to be conquered, but to be 
healed, helped, taught, and made brothers. 

Surveying in retrospect the story of Manhattan, 
we see that New York City has been in succession 
the Indian's home, the Dutchman's camp, village, 
and municipality, the English and the American 
city, and the modern metropolis of the Western 
world. Its population has been Indian, Dutch, 
and always, since the white man came, cosmopoli- 
tan. After the second war with Great Britain, the 
New Englanders began an exodus from their old 
homes, and added a permanent element of good to 
its composition. Then in succession, streams of 
Irish, Germans, Italians, Russians, and men of 
other nationalities, came to its hospitable board, to 
taste the sweets of freedom. These made it at once 
the greatest American, the largest German, the 
most populous Irish, and the richest Jewish, city 
in the world. 

New York was the only one of the original thir- 
teen colonies which was conquered by a foreign 



THE MODERN PILGRIM FATHERS 275 

power, made a royal province, and left without 
charter or proprietors. It had, therefore, the long- 
est struggle for law and liberty. The full story 
of this contest, ending in 1777, forms an unwrit- 
ten chapter in the history of the United States. 
Having epitomized it in a former writing (in 
" Sir William Johnson and the Six Nations ") in 
1891, 1 can, after a more thorough study, reaffirm 
that "having no royal charter, the composite 
people of New York, gathered from many nations, 
but instinct with the principles of the free Re- 
public of Holland, were obliged to study carefully 
the foundations of government and jurisprudence. 
It is true that in the evolution of this Common- 
wealth the people were led by the lawyers, rather 
than by the clergy. Constantly resisting the in- 
vasions of royal prerogative, they formed on an 
immutable basis of law and right that Empire 
State which in its construction and general features 
is, of all tbose in the Union, the most typically 
American. Its historical precedents are not found 
in a monarchy, but in a republic. It is less the 
fruit of Endish than of Teutonic civilization." 



APPENDIX ^ 

A. THE FRAMEWORK OF CHRONOLOGY 

1431. Dutch sailors re-discover and colonize the Azores. 

1567. Spanish invasion of the Netherlands. Flight of 
Walloons. 

1577. First National Synod of the Netherlands Church. 

1581. Dutch Declaration of Independence. Reward of 
25,000 guilders offered for a new way to 
China. 

1597-1616. Dutch circumnavigations of the globe. 

1602. The Dutch East India Company formed. 

1609. Great Truce. Henry Hudson enters the Great 
River. 

1609-1614. Visits of fur-traders. Huts on Manhattan. 

1614. Block's Exploration and Map. New Netherland 
named. The United New Netherland Com- 
pany. Trading posts. 

1621. The West India Company chartered. 

1622. Jesse de Forest in Leyden enrolls emigrants for 

America. 
1623-1624. Walloons colonize New Netherland. 
1626. Civil government. Minuit buys Manhattan. 
1628. First Dutch Church. Domine Michaelius. 
1630. Feudalism introduced. The Patroon system. 

Colony at Rensselaerwijk begun by Nijkerk 

Dutch people. 
1633. Adam Roelandsen, first schoolmaster, arrives. 
1633-1638. Walter van Twiller, Director-General. 



278 APPENDIX 

1637. Arendt van Curler arrives. Peace policy with 

the Iroquois. 
1638-1647. Kieft Director-General. Indian wars. 

1640. New Netherland open to all. Free village com- 

munities. 

1641. First popular assembly. The Twelve Men. 

1642. Domine Megapolensis. Church formed. 

1643. Second popular assembly. The Eight Men. 
1647-1664. Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General. 
1647. Election of the Nine Men by the people. 
1653. Hebrews arrive at Manhattan. 

1655. Fall of New Sweden. 

1661. Wiltwijk, Schenectady, and settlements of free 

farmers. 
1664. English conquest. New York a feudal province. 

1673. Dutch recapture New Netherland. 

1674. Treaty of Westminster. Surinam given to the 

Dutch. 

1675. Andros governor. Manhattan monopoly of bolt- 

ing flour. 

1683. Charter of Liberties. "Governor, Council, and 
the people met in general assembly." Arrival 
of the Huguenots in New York. 

1685. Charter annulled. New York a royal province. 

1688. Revolution in England. William III, of Holland, 
King. 

1690. Uprising of the people. Jacob Leisler governor. 
First Congress of the Colonies. French inva- 
sion from Canada. Schenectady burned. At- 
tempts of British governors to force a State 
Church on the people. Resistance of the As- 
sembly. British failure. 



APPENDIX 279 

1695. The Dutch obtain a charter of free Church gov- 
ernment. 

1702-1708. Cornbury's oppression causes a large Dutch 
emigration into the Raritan valley. 

1705. Cessation of legislation in behalf of the Church 
of England. 

1708-1792. Struggle for ecclesiastical independence 
from Holland. The battle of languages. 

1766. Charter of Rutgers College signed. 

1771. Dutch Church congress and written constitution. 

1775-1783. War of the Revolution. Its chief seat 
within the area of New Netherland. 

1776. First foreign salute to the American flag by 
Governor de Graeff at St. Eustatius. 

1780. Recognition of the American by the Dutch Re- 
public. 

1792-1800. Holland Land Company, purchasing four 
million acres, develops western New York 
and Pennsylvania. 

1796. Emigration westward of New Jtersey Dutchmen. 

1800. English language in general use. 

1844. Large immigration of Dutch into the Western 
States. 

1904. Second person with Dutch name elected Presi- 
dent of the United States. 

B. AUTHORITIES USED IN PREPARATION 
OF THIS VOLUME 

In addition to the standard authorities, Wassenaer, 
de Laet, van Meteren, de Vries, van der Donck, and 
the early Dutch writers, I have made plentiful use of 



280 APPENDIX 

the local town, city, and church records of New Nether- 
land, though not always trusting the published transla- 
tions, but consulting the originals ; also : — 

Het Onderwijs te Nijkerk na de Hervorming. (1593- 
1630.) 

Nijkerk voor Twee Eeuwen, 

Het Landgericht van Veluwe. By G. Beernink. 

Geldersse Geschiedenissen, door Arend van Slicht- 
enhorst. Arnhem, 1654. 

Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk. P. J. 
Blok. 8 vols. 

Levenschets van Rev. Dr. A. C. Van Haalte. D.D. 

DOSKER. 

De Nederlandsche Geschlachtsnamen. Winkler. 

Joan Derek vom der Capellen tot den Pol. Sillem, 

Brieven van en an Joan Derek Capellen. Beaufort. 

Volkomen Woordenboek. Sewel-Buys. (1776.) 

De Post Acta of Nahandelingen van de National 
Synode van Dordrecht. Dr. H. H. Kuyper. 

Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York 
(" The Amsterdam Correspondence "). (E. T. Corwin, 
Daniel Van Pelt, Henry Utterwick, Hugh Hast- 
ings.) 6 vols. (1621-1810.) Published 1905. 

Year Books of Holland Society. (1888-1906.) 

Documentary History of New York and Colonial 
History of New York. 

The Records of New Amsterdam. 15 vols. (1653- 
1674.) Edited by Berthold Fernow. 

Papers from the archives of Amsterdam, Middleburg, 
Leeuwarden, Nijkerk, etc. 

Church Records and Schenectady First Church Me- 
morial. Pearson — Griffis. 



APPENDIX 281 

History of Schenectady Patent. Pearson — I^Iac- 

MURRAY. 

First Families of Schenectady and of Albany. 2 
vols. Pearson. 

Brodhead's History of the State of New York. 

History of the Reformed Church in the Nether- 
lands. Hansen. 

Manual of the Reformed Church in America. (4th 
ed.) CoRwiN. 

The Huguenot Element among the Dutch. Ver- 

MILTE. 

The Leisler Troubles in 1689. Vermilte. 

Institutes of Laws of Holland. Van der Linden. 

Francis Adrian van der Kemp. Fairchild. 

The Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. J. K. 
Allen. 

Anthology of New Netherland. H. G. Murphy. 

The de Forests of Avesnes. J. W. de Forest. 
1900. 

The Founding of New Sweden. C. T. Oohner 
(Keen). 1876. 

The Rensselaer-Bowier Manuscripts. E. van Laeb. 
•1908. 



INDEX 



Adams, John, 260, 263, 269. 
Adirondacks, 7, 19, 158. 
Adringa, Joris, 217. 
Africa, 41, 44, 45, 252, 254. 
Agriculture, 7, 12, 25, 31, 56, 76, 

127. 
Alaska, 266. 
Albany, 10, 28, 153, 194r-200, 258, 

272. 
Algonquins, 44, 69, 84, 88, 142. 
Allen, J. K., 291. 
Allston, VV., 165. 
Alms, 95, 144, 191. 
Alva, 1, 112. 
Amboyna, 144. 
America discovered, 2. 
Amersfoort, 97. 
Amsterdam, 8, 65, 131, 144. 
Amsterdam Correspondence, 38. 
Anabaptists, 117, 203. 
Andros, 203, 219, 220, 224, 228, 237, 

238, 278. 
Anne, Queen, 233, 241. 
Anglican Church, 238, 264. 
Animals, 116-157. 
Anker, 164. 

Anneke Janse, 79, 210, 241. 
Antwerp, 1. 
Arabia, 273, 274. 
Architecture, 7, 11, 162-166, 212. 
Arctic exploration, 3, 8, 9. 
Aristocratic element, 226, 236. 
Arms, 47, 68, 70, 78,94, 133. 
Asiatic people, 274. 
Assembly of New York, 142, 241, 

244. 
Avesnes, 22, 27. 
Axe, 86, 162. 
Azores, 2, 277. 

Bahia, 41, 139. 

Baltimore, Lord, 136, 148. 

Bankers, 213. 

Baptism, 60, 95, 187, 213, 214, 252- 

254. 
Barhydt, 213. 
Bark houses, 7, 11, 162. 
Barneveld, 97, 266, 267, 268. 
Batavian Republic, 266. 
Battery, 12, 33. 
Bayard, Mrs., 112. 
Beaufort, 280. 
Beaver, 67, 116, 165, 201. 



Bedrooms, 160, 168, 169. 

Beds, 168, 169. 

Beer, 82. 

Beernmk, G., 280. 

Belfry, 55. 

Belgic Confession, 26, 188. 

Belgic Netherlands, 1, 17, 22, 26. 

Bellomont, 234, 240. 

Bells, 186, 201, 212, 213, 214. 

Bergen County, 265. 

Beversvrede, 133. 

Beverwijk, 101, 127. 

Bibles, 25, 26, 38, 78, 172, 173. 

Bincks, Jacob, 217. 

Birds, 53, 158, 186. 

Blacks. See Negroes. 

Blacksmith, l&i, 165. 

Block, Adrian, 10, 14-17, 53, 277. 

Block Island, 16. 

Blok, P. I., 280. 

Blommaert, 64. 

Blood revenge, 70. 

Blue Hen's Chickens, 137. 

Bogardus, E., 51, 57, 79, 83, 89. 

Bolting monopoly, 203, 210, 219, 

220, 278. 
Books, 38, 150, 175-180, 193, 214. 
Books on New Netherland, 2, 68, 

116, 180. 
Boston, 228, 257. ^, ^ ^^ 

Boston Congregational Club, 35. 
Boundaries, 19, 35, 56. 
Bowery, 128. 
Bowling Green, 32. 
Boys in the Netherlands, 26, 57, 

150, 155, 158, 170. 
Bradford, William, 35. 
Brandy, 223. 
Brazil, 25, 136, 139, 140. 
Bricks, 38, 42, 162, 189. 
British emigrants, 44, 96. 
British Governors, 231. 
British soldiers, 195, 196, 199, 211, 

240. 
Broadway, 85. 
Brodhead, 15, 281. 
Bronk, Jonas, 87. 
Brook Farm, 138. 
Brooklyn, 14, 127. 
Brookton, 266. 
Brouwer, 77. 
Brown, S. R., 273. 
Buffalo, 266, 267. 



284 



INDEX 



Bundling, 155. 
Burghers, 61, 62. 
Burgomaster, 115, 116. 
Burgoyne, 258. 
Burials, 234. 
Buskirk, 213. 
Busti, 266. 

Cabot, 35. 

Calendar, 150, 154. 

Calkoens, 269. 

Calvinism, 223. 

Campanius, 132. 

Canada, 65, 202, 204, 207, 211, 230, 

258, 265. 
Canals, 267. 
Canal Street, 12. 
Canaries, 2. 
Cannibalism, 75. 
Cannon, 8, 24, 146, 187. 
Canoes, 13, 103, 158. 
Canterbury, 222. 
Cape Henlopen, 64, 69. 
Capsey Hook, 11, 12. 
Captives, 210, 211. 
Caricatures, 49. 
Carleton, D., 22. 
Carolinas, 148. 
Carpenter's Hall, 251. 
Castle Island, 10. 
Castles, 10, 13, 74. 
Catechisms, 93, 132, 170, 175, 

176. 
Catholics, Roman, 222, 240. 
Catskill. See Katskill. 
Catskills, 57, 257. 
Cazenovia, 266. 
Cemetery, 41, 91. 
Certificates, 175. 
Chainbearer, The, 262. 
Champlain, 3. 
Charity, 18, 95, 170, 205, 206. 
Charities, 18, 97, 98, 161, 170, 205, 

206. 
Charles I., 52, 54. 
Charles II., 145, 218, 219, 221, 222, 

238. 
Charter of Liberty, 220, 221. 
Charter of 1640, 65. 
Charters, 121, 122, 128, 131, 223, 

224, 237, 239, 243, 278, 279. 
Chatelaine, 78, 173, 189. 
Chenango Forks, 265. 
Chicago, 272, 
Chimneys, 165, 166. 
China, 3, 4, 273, 277. 
Christening, 170, 181, 187, 197. 
Christian Reformed, 97, 272. 
Christiansen, H., 10. 
Christina, Queen, 129, 130. 
Chronology, 242, 243. 
Church, First, 46-48. 



Church edifices, 31, 46-48, 55, 56, 

200, 212, 239. 
Church of England, 239-242, 279. 
Church interiors, 185-190. 
Churches, 18, 31, 46-48, 96. 
Circumnavigation of the globe, 

68, 277. 
Cities, 18, 30, 203, 223. 
City Government, 18, 30. 
City Hall, 179. 
City Hall Park, 12, 128. 
Civic life, 29. 
Civilization, 103, 148. 
Classis in America, 238, 248, 253 
Classis of Amsterdam, 25, 96, 117, 

179, 247, 252. 
Claverack, 16, 90. 
Clinton, DeWitt, 268. 
Clinton, George, 124. 
Clinton, J., 259. 
Clothing, 196. 
Clute, 237. 
Codfish, 67, 203. 
Cock of St. Nicholas, 55. 
Coenties Slip, 82. 
Coffee, 82, 98, 99. 
Cohoes, 68, 73. 
Collect, 13, 153. 
Collections, 95, 170, 191. 
Collegiate Church School, 177. 
Colman, John S., 5. 
Colonial Dames, 138. 
Colonists, 21, 22, 218, 270. 
Colonic, 101. 
Colonization, 139. 
Colors. See Flag. 
Colve, 217, 219. 
Comforters of the sick, 27, 34, 96, 

178. 
Commerce, 21, 56. 
Commissary, 102. 
Committee of Safety, 228-230. 
Common lands, 127, 128. 
Common schools, 243, 
Commonality, 141, 227, 
Communion Table, 25, 95, 176, 187, 

188, 191, 249, 253. 
Conewago, 265, 
Congress, 230, 251, 278, 279, 
Connecticut, 16, 19, 51, 53, 54, 55, 

56, 208. 
Consistory, 46, 76, 96, 188, 239. 
Constitutions, 124, 147, 250, 252, 

255. 
Continentals, 48, 137, 247, 251, 261. 
Conversion of Indians, 19, 34. 
Cookies, 154. 
Cooper, F., 194, 261, 268. 
Corlaer, 100, 102, 103, 272. 
Corlaer's Hook, 87, 109. 
Corn, 5, 7. 
Cornbury, Lord, 241, 242, 243, 279. 



INDEX 



285 



Corwin's Manual, 183, 262, 281. 
Covenant of Corlaer, 101, 103. 
Cows, 88, 113-125, 205, 212. 
Cradles, 28, 170, 171. 
Creeds, 26, 34, 93. 
Cromwell, 138, 233. 
Crow-steps, 162, 163. 
Crullers, 75. 
Curafoa, 178. 
Curfew, 82. 
Curtius, A., 179. 

Daille, 232. 

Daisy, 157. 

Dakota, 97, 272. 

Danker and Sluyter, 204. 

Dartmouth, 8. 

Declaration of Independence, 

224, 261, 263, 277. 
De (prefix), 172. 
Deer, 158, 159. 

De Forest, Jesse, 20-25, 66, 277. 
De Forest, J. W., 281. 
De Forests, 213. 
De Graff, 213. 
De Graeff, 7, 263, 279. 
Delaware, 1, 30, 31, 64, 68-72, 119, 

137, 129-138. 
Delaware Dutch, 138. 
Delaware River and Vallev, 4, 15, 

72, 126, 132-135, 143, 144, 260, 265. 
Delfshaven, 35. 
Delft, 113. 
Delft ware, 96, 165. 
Dellius, 179, 229-230. 
Democracy, 48. 
De Lille, 184. 
De Nonville, 222. 
De Rasieres, 32, 33, 36. 
De Ronde, 249-250. 
De Ruyter, 59, 147, 217, 266. 
De Vries, 68, 71, 83, 86, 87, 104, 108. 
Devil, 105, 106. 
De Witt, Simeon, 261, 262. 
Diamond State, 137. 
Documentary History of New 

York, 270. 
Dogs, 5, 7, 71, 158. 
Domine, 19, 43, 96, 168, 169, 175, 

229-230, 257. 
Dominie, 43, 251. 
Dongan, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224. 
Doors, 163, 166, 167. 
Dordrecht, 249. 

Dorp, 152, 202. See Schenectady. 
Dosker, H., 280. 
Doughnuts, 75. 

Drinking customs, 41, 50, 52, 190. 
Drisius, 145. 
Du Bois, 124, 262, 
Dutchess County, 125. 
Duke of York, 145, 243. 



Duke's laws, 125, 216, 219. 

Dunderberg, 6, 18. 

Dunkirk, 77. 

Dunkirkers, 24, 51, 57, 69, 77. 

Duryee, 213. 

Dusma, 126. 

Dutch courage, 199. 

Dutch language, 26, 27, 35, 48. 

149,246-250,256. 
Dutch Republic, 2, 17, 21, 26, 27, 

40. 
Dutch take Holland, 270. 

Easel, 160. 

East India Company, 2, 4. 

Easter, 150, 157. 

Ecclesiastical Records, 238, 280. 

Economics, 1, 2, 14, 32, 36, 42, 130- 
142, 144. 

Education, 44, 78, 92-94, 160, 175, 
176, 193, 248. 

Educational endowment, 262. 

Eelkins, Jacob, 52, 74. 

Eencluys, J. Hans, 53, 205, 212. 

Eendracht, 76, 78. 

Eight Men, 88, 278. 

Elsingburg, 132. 

Elting, E., 128. 

Emigrants, 38, 102, 265, 270. 

Emigration from the Nether- 
lands, 1, 99, 264, 270. 

Emigration westward, 123, 265- 
266, 270, 279. 

Empire State, 25, 37, 267-270. 

Engineers, 32, 33. 

English conquest, 278. 

English immigrants, 223, 226. 

English language, 193, 247, 249, 
264 269. 

Episcopal Churches, 136, 239, 240. 

Erasmus, 119. 

Erie Canal, 267, 268. 

Esopus, 10, 28, 29, 143. 

Established Church, 238. 

Evertsen, C, 217. 

Fads, 197. 

Fairchild, 281. 

Family life, 25. 

Family names, 201, 213. 

Farmer (Interlaken), 266. 

Farmer, John, 141. 

Far East, 272. 

Fashions, 196, 197. 

Fauna, 116, 157. 

Fence-viewer, 125. 

Fernow, B., 280. 

Festivals, 60, 150, 154, 170. 

Feudalisms, 124, 163. 211, 277. 

Feudalism of America, 38, 62-€6, 

124, 188, 211, 277. 
Firearms, 3, 6, 74, 82, 157. 



286 



INDEX 



Fireplace, 165, 166. 

Fire water, 6, 8, 73, 199, 200. 

Flags, 4, 24, 70, 135, 136, 138, 142, 

148, 149, 216, 258, 279. 
Floors, 167. 
Flora, 6, 157. 

Flour, 47, 203, 210, 219, 220, 226. 
Flowers, 6, 74, 157, 170, 212. 
Foering, C, 262. 
Fonda, 213. 
Food, 7, 12, 42, 170. 
Foreign missions, 273. 
Fore-reader, 47, 191. 
Forests, 11, 12, 104, 117, 157, 261. 
Formosa, 18, 19, 96. 
Fort Amsterdam, 32, 33, 46, 55, 

113, 143, 146, 147, 178, 217, 231. 
Fort at Schenectady, 208. 
Fort Casimir, 134, 138. 
Fort Christina, 134. 
Fort Elsingburg, 132. 
Fort Nassau, 10, 52, 132, 133, 134. 
Fort Orange, 10, 14, 28, 86, 85. 
Fort Schuyler, 268. 
Fort Trinity, 134. 
France. See French. 
Franklin, B., 263. 
Frederick Henry, 52. 
Free farmers, 29, 63, 65, 121-123, 

203, 211. 
Freeman, 213. 
Freeman, B., 179. 
Free village communities, 29, 57, 

65, 131, 278. 
Frelinghuysen, 248. 
French, 26, 27, 96, 103, 251, 270. 
French in Canada, 63, 65, 202, 208, 

209, 231, 278. 
French language, 26, 31, 32, 126. 
Friesland, 152. 
Frisians, 134, 271. 
Frontier, 195, 198, 202, 208, 211. 
Fuel, 43, 106. 
Fuller, 213. 

Funerals, 5, 191, 197, 211, 234. 
Fur trade, 10, 14, 37, 75, 104, 277. 
Furs, 14, 42, 157. 

Gables, 91, 95, 162, 163, 185. 

Games and sports, 150, 156, 167. 

Garden, 157. 

Garden Street Church, 239. 

Gardiner, Lyon, 55. 

Gauge of road, 95. 

General Synod, 252. 

Genesee Valley, 260, 265, 268. 

Geneva, 266. 

Geology, 141. 

George III, 33, 257. 

Germans, 96, 227, 230, 245, 257. 

Gettysburg, 65. 

Gilded Man, 26, 218 



Girls in New Netherland, 26, 28, 

41, 42, 79, 150, 152, 156, 171, 173. 
Glen, Sanders- 210. 
Godyn, 64, 69. 
Goetschius, 262. 
Gottenburg, 132. 
Governor's Island, 57. 
Grand Rapids, 272. 
Grant, Mrs., 194. 
Gravesend, 57, 146. 
Great Britain, 242, 256. 
Great Truce, 2, 3, 4, 277. 
Green Bush, 74. 
Groot, 213. 
Grout, 213. 

Guelderland, 49, 90-100. 
Guiana Dutch, 218, 219. 
Guilderland, 80. 
Gustavus Adolphus, 129. 

Haarlem, 105, 157. 

Hackensack, 14, 260. 

Hadson, W., 137. 

Hagaman, 213. 

Hague, 15, 140, 204. 

Half-breeds, 76. 

Half Moon, 3-9, 11, 24. 

Hamilton, A., 182. 

Hamlin, 213. 

Hansen, M. G., 281. 

Hardenberg, J. R., 262. 

Harderwijk,93, 97. 

Harm an, 213. 

Harris, T., 119. 

Hartford, 53, 54, 119. 

Harvard College, 269. 

Hastings, H., 280. 

Haverstraw, 6. 

Hearth, 154, 166. 

Hebrews, 117, 278. 

Heidelberg Catechism, 249. 

Hell Gate, 15. 

Hem, 40, 41. 

Henlopen, Cape, 69. 

Hepatica, 157. 

Heraldry. See Arms. 

Hesse, Captain, 51. 

Heyes, P., 69. 

Hiawatha, 73. 

Hoag, 213. 

Hoboken, 64, 143. 

Hogs, 59, 84, 113. 

Holidays. GO, 93, 95. 

Holland-America Line, 11. 

Holland Land Company, 263, 266, 

279. 
Holland, Michigan, 264. 
Holland Patent, 266. 
Holland Societies, 11,97, 138, 201. 
Holmes, 55, 137. 
Home life, 38, 269. 
Hoorn, 41, 72. 



INDEX 



287 



Hoorn Kill, 72. 

Horekill. See Hoorn Kill. 

Horse-mill, 47. 

Horses, 159, 166, 192, 209, 271. 

House of Good Hope, 53, 55. 

Housett, G., 64, 69. 

Hudde, 133. 

Hudson, Henry, 3-9, 24, 99, 257. 

Hudson River, 11, 128, 152, 153, 

277. 
Hudson Valley, 96, 264. 
Huguenots, 31, 126, 127, 226-228. 
Huidekoper, 267. 
Hunterdon County, 242. 
Hurley, 124. 
Huyck, J.,34. 
Hymn-books, 188. 

Ice-yachts, 152. 

Immigrants, 76-80, 96, 102, 141. 

Independents, 117. 

India, 273. 

Indiana, 266. 

Indians, 6, 7, 10, 44, 56, 64, 103, 

105, 107, 176, 198, 253. 
Indian trade, 199. 
Indian wars, 8&-88, 103, 104, 142, 

143. 
Ingoldsby, 231. 
Inheritance, law of, 147. 
Iowa, 97, 249, 264, 270, 271. 
Iroquois, 28, 37, 42, 44, 69, 70, 73, 

75, 84, 87, 88, 103, 152, 199, 202, 

261, 
Irving,W., 258. 

Jacobsen, Rutgers, 200. 

James I, 8. 

James II, 33, 145, 220, 221, 224, 

235. 
Jamestown, 46. 
Janse, R., 79. 

Japan, 3, 8, 21, 59, 157, 175, 273. 
Japanese, 144, 196. 
Japanese proverb, 159. 
Java, 18, 56. 
Jersev City, 64. 
Jesse'de Forest, 20-25, 66, 277. 
Jesuits, 241. 

Jews, 118, 119, 223, 274, 278. 
"John Companv,"26, 59, 61, 130, 

139, 141, 144, 203, 215, 217. 
Johnson, Sir William, 275. 
Jonkheer, 89, 114. 
Joris, A., 27, 28, 74. 
Juet, 7, 10. 
Juffroxnv, 190, 207. 

Katskill, 90. 
Kentucky, 265, 266. 
Keokuk, 271. 
Kermis, 95, 150, 152. 



Kieft, William, 81-88, 89, 104, 112, 

128, 130, 131, 133, 274. 
Kievits, 186. 

Kievit's Hook, 53, 55, 186. 
Kills, 74 
Kimono, 196. 
King's College, 248. 
Kingston, 122, 123, 128, 162, ISO, 

278. 
Kitchen door, 166, 167. 
Kittle, 213. 
Klap, 180. 
Klein, 213. 

Knickerbockers, 36, 172. 
Kriekenbeek, O., 74. 
Krol, S. J., 34, 46, &t, 75, 76. 
Kuyter, 89, 114. 

Labadists, 204. 

Laidlie, A.. 249, 250. 

Lake region, 265. 

La Montague, 82. 

Land, 10, 21, 61, 62, 123, 125, 128. 

Land purchases, 21, 32, 64, 69, 70, 

126, 136. 
Land tenure, 32, 52, 61-66. 
Land titles, 64, 126, 261. 
Languages, 26, 31, 44, 48, 79, 115, 

117, 231, 246-250, 251, 264, 271, 

279. 
Lansing, 213. 
Latin, 175, 181, 182, 258. 
Latin races, 103. 
Latin School, 182. 
Law. 147, 150, 214, 235, 236, 241-242, 

243. 275. 
Lawyers, 104, 243-245, 275. 
League of the Five Nations, 73, 

104. 
Leisler, Jacob. 33, 204, 206, 220, 

225, 226, 234, 278. 
Lenni-Lenape, 70. 
Lewes 130. 

Leydeii, 5, 19, 22, 23, 40, 157. 
Leydt, 262. 
Linklaen, 266. 
Linn, W., 177. 
Liquor business, 199, 200. 
Liturgy of the Reformed Church, 

27, 48, 95, 107, 169, 170, 188, 200. 
Livingston, J. H.,250. 
Livingston, W., 248. 
Log cabin, 126, 162. 

f:^^!""^, a 29, 57. 109, 120. 

141. 146. 
Lord's Prayer. 133, 
Lord's Supper, 48, 188, 192. 
Louis XIV, 210, 216, 218, 226, 

227. 
Lovelace, 216. 
Loyalties, 256, 257. 



288 



INDEX 



Lures to the New World, 61, 

67. 
Lutherans, 70, 118, 130, 132, 223. 
Luzac, Jean, 269. 

Mackerel, 24, 27. 

MacMurray, 280. 

Magna Charta, 218. 

Mahogany, 168, 188, 218. 

Maize. See Corn. 

Makemie, F., 243. 

Malachi, 76. 

Manhattan, 13, 25, 27, 28, 32, 33, 

41, 46, 47, 277. 
Manors, 61, 62, 194, 195, 237. 
Manual of the Reformed Church, 

262-281. 
Maple sugar, 156, 157. 
Mappa, 267, 268, 269. 
Maps, 14, 15, 17, 30, 173, 261, 277. 
Marcellus, 213. 
Markets, 98. 
Marriage, 45, 170, 193. 
Martyrs Street, 210. 
Maryland, 9. 
Massachusetts, 9, 46, 203. 
Massacres, 140, 200, 210, 232, 259. 
Mather, Cotton, 223. 
Maurice, John, 140. 
Maurice, Prince, 11, 33, 77, 78. 
Mauritius River, 18. 
May. Captain, 24, 27, 30. 
Mayiaower, 24, 118. 
Meadville, 267 
Meals, 42, 93, 98, 99. 
Medals, 263. 
Megapolensis, Domine, 59, 104, 

194, 278. 
Megapolensis, Samuel, 134. 
Melborne, 232, 234. 
Melyn, 89, 114. 
Mermaids, 5. 
Michaelius, J., 40-46, 76, 176, 177, 

277. 
Michigan, 97, 249, 264, 270, 272. 
Middle States, 242, 
Millstone, 242. 
Ministry Act, 238, 239, 241. 
Minuit, Peter, 9, 30-39, 46, 66, 67, 

129-133, 137, 277. 
Missionaries, 19, 265, 273, 274. 
Mississippi Valley, 270. 
Mohawk River and Valley, 29, 37, 

96, 153, 158, 195, 207, 209, 211, 259, 

264 270. 
Mohawks, 107, 207, 208, 210, 214. 
Mohicans, 28, 42. 74, 87. 
Money, 19, 32. See Wampiim. 
Monopolies, 20, 104, 203, 207, 219, 

220, 226, 278. 
Monroe Doctrine, 35. 
Montague, De la, 82, 179. 



Morality, 76, 174. 
Motley, 250. 

Mottoes, 76, 78, 105, 165, 200, 254. 
Municipalities, 18, 30. 
Murdoch, 257. 
Murphy, H. G., 281. 
Music, 48, 93. 
Mynderse, 213. 

Mythology of New Netherland, 
4, 5, 49, 108. 

Names altered, 16, 18, 72. 
Names of people, 45, 201, 213, 262, 

270, 271. 
Names of places, 16, 18. 
Names of ships. See Ships' 

names. 
Names of women, 45, 171. 
Nantes, 227. 

Navigation Act, 59, 145. 
Neatness, 207. 
Nebraska, 264. 
Negroes, 45, 169, 173, 189, 195, 200, 

252-254. 
Nehemiah, 76. 
Netherlands, 1, 12, 40, 61. 
Netherlands Society of Philadel- 
phia. 138. 
New Amstel, 136. 
New Amsterdam (Buffalo), 266. 
New Amsterdam, 27, 32, 146. 
New Brunswick, 255, 264. 
Newburg, 152. 
New Castle, 134, 138. 
New Dorp, 124. 
New England, 15, 35, 36, 146. 
New England rum, 199, 200. 
New Gottenburg, 132. 
New Haven, 131, 132, 133. 
New Jersev, 126-135, 145, 242, 243, 

260, 261, 264. 
New Netherland, 17, 19, 139, 140, 

142, 145, 146, 184, 279. 
New Netherland (ship), 24-28, 37, 

43, 71. 
New Paltz, 29, 124, 125, 126, 127. 
Newport, 79. 

New Sweden, 129-135, 278. 
New Year's Day, 154. 
New York City, 274. 
New York State, 274-275. 
Nicolls, 215, 216. 
Nicholson, 228. 
Nijkerk, 49, 50, 51, 76, 90-100, 109, 

237, 277. 
Nine Men, 114-115, 278. 
Niskayuna, 73. 
Norman's Kill, 73, 74. 
Northeast Passage, 3. 
Norumbega, 6. 
Notelman, G., 51. 
Nucella, J. P., 180. 



INDEX 



289 



Oberlin, 269. 
Odhner, C. T., 281. 
Ohio, 266. 
Oil, 67, 68. 
Old Glory, 148. 
Oothout, 213. 
Orange County, 26. 
" Oranje boven," 217. 
Ostrander, 213. 
Ostrom, 213 
Ouderkirk, 213. 
Ovid, 266. 
Owasco, 266. 

Pacham, 85. 

Palatinate, 127, 136, 245. 

Palisades, 6, 14. 

Papooses, 105, 106, 153. 

Parsonage, 195, 206. 

Pasture, 128, 205, 212. 

Paterson, 272. 

Patria, 1, 3, 17, 90-100. 

Patroon, 61-66, 78-80, 186, 200, 205, 
206, 211. 

Pauw, M., 64. 

Pavonia, 64, 87, 143. 

Peace League, 28, 103. 

Peace policy, 28, 103. 

Pearl Street, 33, 34, 82, 258. 

Pearse, 213. 

Pearson, 280. 
Peel, 213. 
Pella, 271. 

Penn, William, 32, 136, 137, 148. 
Pennsylvania, 133, 185, 266. 
People, The, 89, 121, 141, 220, 
221, 227, 229, 2M, 241, 244, 250, 
278. 
Pequots, 54, 55. 
Petersen, E., 179. 
Pews, 186, 188. 
Philadelphia, 30, 133. 
Piet Hein, 41, 140. 
Pilgrim Fathers, 22, 32, 34, 203, 

270-272. 
Pinxter, 60. 
Pipes, 70, 107, 167, 190. 
Plan of union, 252. 
Planck, 213. 
Plockhov, C, 131, 138. 
Plymouth, England, 66. 
Plymouth, Mass., 32, 36, 46, 53. 
Poetry, 134, 214. 
Polhemus, J., 7, 136. 
Poppegoya, 134. 
Population, 32, 274. 
Portuguese, 2, 118, 140. 
Poor pasture, 205, 212. 
Poor, The, 2, 95, 170, 205, 206, 

212. 
Post, 98. 
Potatoes, 98. ' 



Potter, E. T., 212. 
Poughkeepsie, 68, 125, 250. 
Prayers, 169, 188. 
President, 279. 
Primogeniture, 236. 
Princeton, 249, 202. 
Printing, 116, 133, 175, 214. 
Printz, J., 132, 133, 134. 
Privileges and Exemptions, 62. 
Proper, 213. 
Proverbs, 80, 88, 150, 156, 159. 161. 

165, 191. 
Psalms, 26. 
Public schools in New Xether- 

land, 48, 84, 175. 
Public schools in Netherlands, 

26, 40, 92-94. 
Pulpit, 185, 188, 189, 201. 
Purchase of land. See Land Pur- 
Puritans, 128, 186, 203. 
Putnam, 213. 

Quackenbush, 213. 

Quakers, 117, 137, 223. 

Quant, 213. 

Queen Anne, 241. 

Queen Christina, 129, 130. 

Queen's CoUege, 248, 255, 261. 

Raleigh, "W., 218. 

Rapelye, Simon, 28. 

Raritan, 262, 279. 

Raritan Indians, &i, 84, 85. 

Raritan River, 260. 

Raritan Valley, 242, 260, 262, 264. 

Reagle, 213. 

Reformation, 92. 

Reformed Church in America, 

31. 46, 60, 234, 236-243, 246-255. 
Reformed Church in the Nether- 
lands, 26, 46, 92, 96, 224, 229, 234, 

270, 272. 
Religion, 25, 26, 169, 170, 185-193, 

254, 267. 
Rensselaer, 91. 

Rensselaer-Bowier MSS., 50, 281. 
Rensselaerwijk, 57, 99. 101, 102, 

107, 120, 194-196. 237. 277. 
Representative Government. 85- 

88, 128, 142, 220, 224. 
Republican Government. 216, 278. 
Revolution, 137, 150, 224, 241, 251, 

278 
Revolutionary War, 59, 145, 240, 

256-263. 
Rhine, 126, 245. 
Rhode Island, 16. 
Right, turning to the, 94. 
Ring fence. 125. 
Rivers, 5, 11, 19. 
Rock Regio. 102. 



290 



INDEX 



Roelandsen, Adam, 51, 176, 177, 

277. 
Roman Catholics, 97, 98, 240. 
Roman Law, 235, 
Romeyn, 262. 
Ronduit, 10, 123. 
Roosevelt, 16, 279. 
Rosa, 213. 
Rotterdam, 56. 
Round Robin, 104. 
Rum, 199. 
Ruoff, 213. 
Russia, 175. 
Rutgers College, 242, 255, 262, 

279. 
Rysingh, J., 134. 
Ryswijk, 211. 

Sacraments, 187, 192. 

Saint Eustatius, 263. 

Salem, 131. 

Salute to the flag, 263, 279. 

Sanders, 213. 

Sandy Hook, 2, 4, 18, 31. 

San Salvador, 41, 139, 140. 

Santa Claus, 95, 150, 153, 154, 166. 

Sarah Rapelve, 28. 

Sassafras, 168. 

" Satanstoe," 194. 

Saw-mills, 162. 

Saybrook, 55. 

Scandinavians, 129, 131. 

Schaats, G., 195. 

Schenectady, 53, 35, 74, 120-124, 

150, 155, 158, 162, 190, 202-214, 

232, 259, 278. 
Schepens, 115, 116. 
Schermerhorn, 213. 
Schoolcraft, 213. 
Schoolmasters, 76, 109, 191, 238. 
Schools, 26, 48, 76, 93, 149, 175. 
Scholte, 270. 
Schout, 51, 102, 116. 
Schureman, J., 257. 
Schuyler, 201, 213. 
Schuyler, Philip, 258. 
Schuylkill, 129, 131, 133. 
Scriba, 266. 
Seals, 47, 200. 203. 
Secret instructions, 219, 237. 
Seeds, 31,37. 
Sellye, 213. 
Selyns, 184, 214, 229. 
Sempronius, 266. 
Sermons, 92, 95, 151, 189. 
Servants, 45, 189, 195. 
Sexton, 189. 
Shaffer, 213. 

Ships, 10, 24, 31, 51, 66, 68. 
Ship-building, 15, 37. 
Ships' names, 10, 24, 31, 36, 51, 66. 

68, 78, 81, 89, 135. 



Shoes, 196. 

Shops, 196. 

Sillem, A. J., 180. 

Silver, 68, 110, 187, 192, 197, 213. 

Silvernails, 107. 

Simcoe, 262. 

Singing, 26, 38, 93, 154. 

Sitterlee, 213. 

Six Nations, 275. 

Skating, 150, 151, 152. 

Slaghboom, A , 107. 

Slavery, 45, 59, 60, 139, 252, 254. 

Sleep, 169. 

Sleepy Hollow, 185. 

Sleighs, 151, 152. 

Sloughter, 231, 232, 238. 

Smeerenburg, 67. 

Smith, Captain John, 3, 4, 9. 

Smoking, 73, 76, 97, 99, 107, 189. 

Snowshoes, 209. 

Snyder, 213. 

Socialism, 138. 

Social life, 98, 99, 104, 147, 150, 

192, 193, 197, 217 
Social morality, 76, 198. 
Social waste, 198. 
Somerset County, 242, 265. 
Sounding board, 185. 
South America, 139, 204. 
South River. See Delaware River. 
Spain, 1, 16, 20, 51, 91, 175. 
Spaniards, 15, 26, 34, 67, 139. 
Spanish Hill, 15. 
Spitzbergen, 67. 
Spuyten Duyvil, 12, 108, 114. 
Stadt-Huys, 116, 195. 
State Church, 147, 182, 278. 
State House, 116, 195. 
Staten Island, 18, 64, 84, 124, 143. 
States-General. 3, 17, 81. 
Stevenson, J., 178. 
Stoep, 99. 
Stone, Captain, 54. 
Stony Point, 6. 
Stoves, 152, 160, 168, 169, 189. 
Street names, 18. 
Stuart Kings, 145. 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 57, 89, 110-120, 

133, 134, 136, 143, 146, 147, 162, 178, 

215, 278. 
Sullivan's expedition, 259, 261, 

265. 
Sundays, 155, 185-193. 
Surinam, 168, 218. 
Surnames, 218, 219, 278. 
Surrey, 218. 
Susquehanna River and Valley, 

15, 19, 126, 130, 260, 255. 
Swaanendael, 69, 71, 72, 138. 
Swart, 213. 
Sweden, 129-136. 
Swedes, 70, 129-137, 143, 278. 



INDEX 



291 



Swedish West India Company. 1, 

129. 
Swiss, 136, 245. 
Swits, 213. 
Swortfiguers, 213. 
Symbols, I'Jo, 212, 213. 

Tablets, 17, 31, 35, 97. 

Tank Memorial Home, 269. 

Taps, 82. 

Tarrytown, 185-187. 

Tassemaclier, P., 137, 204-210, 238. 

Tawasentha, 73, 

Taxation, 85, 86, 87, 88, 113, 175, 

176, 177, 178, 222, 238, 244. 
Teller, 213. 
Tenants, 62, 63. 
Thanksgiving Day, 150, 154. 
Thrones, 186. 
Tiles, 162. 
Timber, 42. 
Tinicum, 132, 133. 
Tobacco, 36, 58, 70, 98, 99, 190. 
Toleration, 225. 
Toll, 213. 
Tories, 252, 262. 
Torkillas, R., 130. 
Toys, 153. 
Trades and occupations, 172, 196- 

198. 
Traditions, 79, 155. 
Trails 73. 

Translations, 132, 214, 273. 
Trees, 42, 192. 
Trenton, N. J., 132. 
Trenton, N. Y., 267. 
Trinity Church, N. Y., 239. 
Trinity Church, Del., 136. 
Tromp, Admiral, 33, 59, 266. 
Troy, 90. 
Truax, 28, 213. 
Trumbull, 165. 
Trumpeters, 36, 54, 108. 
Truce of 1609, 2, 3, 4, 139. See 

Great Truce. 
Tryon County, 259. 
Turkeys, 158. 
Turning to the right, 94. 
Twelve Men, 86, 87, 120, 126, 278. 
Twombley, 213. 
Tymeson, 213. 

Ulster County, 126, 267. 

Underbill, J., 87. 

Union College, 205, 265. 

Union of the colonies, 230. 

Unitarian faith, 2f.7. 

United New Netherland Com- 
pany, 17. 

University of the State of New 
York, 177, 182. 

Usselinx, 1, 2, 20, 129, 139. 



Utica, 268. 

Utrecht University, 250. 

Utterwick, H., 280. 

Van. See also under family 

names. 
Van, the prefix, 172. 
Van Bibber, 148. 
Van Boetzelaer, 269. 
Van Bunschoten, 262. 
Van Curler, Anthony, 36, 107. 
Van Curler, Arendt, 9, 88, 93, 100, 

107, 121, 202. 
Van Curler, Jacobus, 51, 53, 54, 

87, 102, 109, 158. 
Van Curlers, 90, 91, 94, 108. 
Van der Capellen, 64, 89, 97, 269. 
Van der Donck, A., 68, 104, 114, 

115, 116, 117. 
Van der Kemp, 267-268, 269. 
Van der Linden, 281. 
Vanderlyn, 105. 
Van der Volgen, C, 206. 
Van Dincklagen, 57, 112. 
Van Dyck, ensign, 86. 
Van Dyke, 86, 87, 273. 
Van Laer, E., 281. 
Van Noppen, 148. 
Van Pelt, D., 280. 
Van Raalte, 270, 280. 
Van Rensselaer, K., 50, 58, 76, 80, 

94, 99. 
Van Rensselaer-Bowier MSS., 

50, 281. 
Van Rensselaer, Nicholas, 58, 237. 
Van Rensselaers, 50, 58, 64, 77, 78, 

90, 91, 94. 

Van Schlectenhorst, 50, 90, 114. 
Van Twiller, Walter, 49-59, 85, 90, 

91, 94, 99, 112, 158, 237, 277. 
Van Winkle, Rip, 33. 
Varna, 266. 

Varick, 229, 230. 

Vedder, 21.3. 

Veeder, 213. 

Veluwe, 13. 

Verbeck of Japan, 273. 

Verhulst. W., 30. 

Vermilye, A. G., 23.3, 281. 

Verrazano's Sea, 4. 

Versailles, 204, 209, 210. 

Vertoogh, 114, 115. 

Vibbard, 213. 

Viele, 213. 

Village communities, 29, 128. 

Virginia, 4, 23, 35, 46, 52, 148, 243, 

26;3. 
Visscher, 213. 
Voorhees, 213. 
Voorlezer (fore-reader), 47, 180, 

191. 
Voorsanger (precentor), 48, 191. 



292 



INDEX 



Vrooman, 213, 
Vrooman, B., 259. 

"Waldenses, 127. 

Waldron, 213. 

Walkill, 27, 126. 

Wallabout, 27. 

Walloons, 1, 22-28, 30, 32, 66, 96, 

277. 
Wall Street, 58, 143. 
Wampum, 13, 36, 42, 85, 126. 
Wars, 85-88, 144, 145, 199. 
Washington, 258, 260, 261, 269. 
Wassenaer, 14, 33. 
Wasson, 213. 
Waterloo, 270. 
Watervliet, 7. 
Weathervanes, 91, 164, 165. 
Weatherwax, 213. 
Wecaco, 136. 
Weddings, 169. 
Weeks, 213. 
Welius, E., 136. 
Weller, 213. 
Wemple; 213, 
Wendell, 201, 209, 213. 
"Wessels 213. 
West India Company, 1, 20, 35, 55, 

56, 59, 62, 131, 139, 140, 143, 144, 

242, 269, 277. 
West Indies, 23, 55, 56, 199. 
Westerloo, 258. 
Westinghouse, 213. 
Wethersfield, 155. 
Whales, 21, 67, 72. 
Whiskey, 223. 
Whitbeck, 213. 



Whitmyer, 213. 

Wilhelmina, Queen, 271. 

Willemstadt, 194. 

William I (King), 270, 

William III, 33, 143, 217, 224, 227, 
231, 233, 278. 

William of Orange-Nassau (The 
Silent), 19, 71, 119. 

Wilmington, 130, 136, 138, 

Wiltwijk, 119, 122, 124, 141, 162, 
278 

Windmills, 12, 42, 55, 56, 203. 

Windows, 94, 206. 

Windsor, 94, 206. 

Winegart, 213. 

Winkle, Rip Van, 33. 

Winter sports, 151-153. 

Winthrop, John, 55. 

Witchcraft, 180. 

Wives, 170, 

Wood-runners, 104. 

Women of Netherlands, 78, 79. 

Women of New Netherland, 25, 
28, 41, 45, 55, 79, 80. 

Worship, 34, 47, 48, 191, 192. 

Writers on New Netherland. See 
Michaelius, de Rasieres, de 
Vries, van der Donck, Wasse- 
naer, etc. 

Yale College, 250, 258. 
Yonkers, 114, 

Zeiger, 245, 
Zoology, 4, 5, 
Zuvder Zee, 90, 97. 
Zwolle, 97, 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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